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EVENINGS 



THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE. 



By J. B. SEWALL, 



'O ovpavog kcu t) yrj iraficXevaovrai } of Sc Xoyoi fiov ov /tr] napcXOcxXTt. 

Matt. xxiv. 35. 



BOSTON: 

CROSBY AND NICHOLS 

NEW YORK: O. S. FELT. 

1864. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1804, by 

CROSBY & SICUOLS, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



J THEOLOGICAL v 
SEMINARY LIBRARY. 




; 



ELECTROTTEJD AT THE 

BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOCNDRT, 

4 SPRING LANE. 



- u 

e 

i CO 



NOTE. 

The following Essays upon some of the points 
at issue in the great debate between the church 
and scientific skeptical criticism, were given in the t / 
winter of 1863-4, as Sabbath evening lectures, by 
a pastor to his people. This fact will account for 
their form and the familiarity of their style. 

C3) 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

I. ANTIQUITY OF MAN, 7 

II. THE MOSAIC RECORD OF CREATION IN THE 

LIGHT OF GEOLOGY, 40 

III. THE NOACHIAN DELUGE A HISTORICAL VERITY, 06 

IV. THE MONUMENTS OF EGYPT, AND THEIR TES- 

TIMONY TO THE TRUTH, . . . .96 

V. BISHOP COLENSO, AND HIS ASSAULTS UPON 

THE PENTATEUCH, 122 



(5) 



EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE, 



AND 



SCIENCE. 



THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 

In the first chapter of Genesis, verses twenty- 
six and twenty-seven, is recorded the creation 
of man. And God said, " Let us make man in 
our image, after our likeness ; and let them 
have dominion over the fish of the sea, and 
over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, 
and over all the earth, and over every creeping 
thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God 
created man in his own image ; in the image of 
God created he him ; male and female created 
he them." This is given as the final act in the 
work of creation, and represented to have oc- 
curred upon the sixth and last creative day. 

According to our received chronology, this 
was but 4004 years before Christ, — 5868 years 
ago. In our Keference Bibles it may be noticed 

(7) 



8 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

that the date " B. C." stands at the head of the 
marginal column on every page of the Old 
Testament, and that at the head of the column 
on the first page of Genesis, it reads " 4004 
B. C." This date has been obtained, speaking 
generally, by taking Bible in hand, and reck- 
oning from Adam down — first to Noah, then 
to Abraham, then to the exodus, and so on, 
as the generations and events are given. 

It is not made out, indeed, without difficulty. 
There are intervals, of which the length is not 
precisely given ; e. g\, the period of the Judges 
after the death of Joshua. Hence, there are 
different systems of chronology. The three 
most commonly known, — those of Hales, 
Jackson, and Usher, — make the date of creation 
5411, 5426, and 4004 B. C, respectively. The 
latter, Usher's, is that which has been adopted 
by our English Bible editors. The differences 
are a little more than fourteen hundred years. 

Most of you have heard something of late 
of the "Antiquity of Man," — a question which 
is interesting the religious and scientific world 
very much at the present time. You have 
seen it stated, for it has been much talked of 
in the papers and reviews, that discoveries 
have been made, which demand that the date 
of man's advent upon the earth be carried back 
perhaps tens of thousands of years, perhaps 



THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 9 

hundreds of thousands, perhaps even a million 
or more. In particular, you have heard of Sir 
Charles Lyell's recent volume on the subject. 
Perhaps some of you have read it. In this 
volume these discoveries are gathered up in 
one account, and the distinguished author gives 
his own opinion, or rather frames his argument 
in view of them, for the great antiquity of the 
race. 

I have thought that many of you, in common 
with the thinking world around us, might be 
interested in this question, — interesting and im- 
portant as it is in itself, and in its bearing upon 
the question of the inspiration of the Scrip- 
tures, — and would be glad to hear it discussed. 
I propose, therefore, this evening, in the first 
of this series of discourses, to speak of these 
discoveries, and consider the force of the argu- 
ment derived from them, as it bears upon the 
inspiration of the Bible. 

The discoveries consist chiefly of remains of 
human workmanship in geological strata, which, 
though recent geologically, must in reality be 
tens, or hundreds, or thousands of thousands 
of years old. Some of the discoveries are 
those of ancient caves, mostly filled with earth, 
but evidently once inhabited by animals now, 
and for a long time, extinct. With the bones 
of the ancient extinct animals, have been found 



10 EVEXIXGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

implements of human workmanship, and some- 
times human bones. Others are the remains of 
ancient lake-dwellings in Switzerland, of which 
history preserves no record. I will briefly 
describe these discoveries, beginning with the 
latter. 

In the winter of 1853-4, it being a remark- 
ably dry winter, and the water of the lakes and 
rivers in Switzerland lower than had ever been 
known, the inhabitants of Meilen, by the Lake 
of Zurich, undertook some dredging operations 
in the lake, for the sake of making new land. 
In the course of their labors they discovered a 
number of wooden piles driven deeply into the 
bed of the lake, and anions: them a £reat 
many hammers, axes, hatchets, and other in- 
struments, all made of stone, with two excep- 
tions — an armlet of thin brass wire, and a 
hatchet of bronze. Fragments of rude pottery 
were found in abundance ; also remains of 
charred wood. Of what were these the re- 
mains ? Xothing in the history of Switzerland 
could tell. There was a clew, however, in an- 
cient history. Herodotus tells of a Thracian 
tribe, living about 500 B. C, in the south- 
eastern part of Europe, who constructed their 
dwellings on platforms, raised above the water 
of a lake, and resting on piles. They were 
connected with the shore by narrow, movable 



THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 11 

bridges, and were so extensive as to accommo- 
date the people and their horses. This mode 
of living was doubtless for protection in those 
barbarous and warlike times when, clubs, bows, 
arrows, and stone hatchets being weapons, a 
good distance upon the water was as safe a 
defence as impregnable walls. Other barba- 
rous peoples have been known to construct 
their dwellings in this way within the histori- 
cal period. The inhabitants of New Guinea, in 
Australasia, were found living so by the ex- 
plorers of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
turies.* Without doubt, then, the Swiss lakes 
were once the sites of similar lake-dwellings. 
Many more remains have been discovered 
since 1853-4, showing that the dwellings must 
have been very numerous. It is estimated that 
as many as three hundred wooden huts were 
sometimes comprised in one settlement in this 
way, and at one place, that more than forty 
thousand piles were driven. 

But what is the evidence of the great* anti- 
quity of these lake-dwellings? It consists in 
the fact that only stone implements have been 
found, and with them the remains of extinct 
animals — implements long passed from use, 
and animals extinct, before any record which 
exists. 

* Encyclopaedia Britannica, IV., p. 264. 



12 EVENINGS WITH TEE BIBLE. 

The cavern discoveries have occurred in 
several places in Europe — in Sicily, France, 
Belgium, and England. These caverns exist 
in the limestone of those countries. All lime- 
stone regions abound in caverns. They have 
not been known in modern times till recently, 
and their discovery has been the result of acci- 
dent, as in the case of the famous Brixham cave 
in England, which was discovered by the acci- 
dental falling in of a portion of the roof. It 
may have resulted sometimes, also, from the 
labors of quarrymen ; for in some cases the 
caves, in which remarkable discoveries were 
made, have altogether disappeared. The work 
of quarrying the stone, for building and other 
purposes, has gradually eaten them away. 

These discoveries are very similar. A cave, 
on being opened, would be found more or less 
tilled with gravel and mud ; and over this fre- 
quently an incrustation of stalagmite — a depo- 
sition of limestone, from the water dripping 
from the roof. This showed that water had 
had access to the caves ; and in some cases, it 
was evident that they had long been the under- 
ground channels of rushing torrents. In the 
mud were found bones and implements. The 
bones were those of both living and extinct 
animals, and sometimes of man. The extinct 
animals are those which must have lived in 



THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 13 

Europe when the climate was far different from 
what it now is; e. g., the hippopotamus, the 
great hyena, the great or cave-bear, the rhi- 
noceros, and the primeval elephant, or mam- 
moth. The implements were rude arrow-heads, 
knives, and hatchets, of flint, and smaller in- 
struments of bone, evidently the implements 
of a rude age. 

This is a general description of the cavern 
discoveries. I will now describe one more 
particularly, for the sake of distinctness, — the 
Brixham Cave, in England, already alluded to. 
I call it a cave. It is properly a suit of cav- 
erns, one underground apartment opening out 
of another for hundreds of feet. They were 
first discovered in 1858, as already stated, by 
the roof of one of them accidentally falling in. 
Five galleries have been explored, extending 
several hundred feet in length, while the width 
never exceeded eight feet. The mouth of the 
main entrance is ninety-five feet above the level 
of the sea, and sixty feet above the adjoining 
valley ; by which it is at once seen that a great 
geological change must have occurred in the 
region, since those caverns were channels of 
rivers, and the mud, gravel, and bones in them 
were deposited by water, as they unquestion- 
ably were. The galleries were sometimes filled 
to the roof with grayel, bones, and mud, but 



14 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

generally there was considerable space between 
the roof and floor. The floors, where there 
were fissures in the roof for water to trickle 
through, were covered with stalagmite. The 
order of deposits was the following : — 

At the top, a layer of stalagmite, varying in 
thickness, from one to fifteen inches, which 
sometimes contained bones ; 

Beneath this, loam, or bone-earth, of an 
ochreous red color, from one to fifteen feet in 
thickness ; 

At the bottom, gravel, with many rounded 
pebbles. The fossil remains were found chiefly 
in the second layer, — J:he loam, bone-earth, or 
cave mud, as it is interchangeably called. The 
gravel was barren of fossils, and was not gen- 
erally removed. The remains found in the 
loam were the bones of the extinct animals I 
have referred to, — the primeval elephant, the 
rhinoceros, cave-bear, hyena, and lion ; also a 
species of horse, and of the ox, and some 
others. With these were mam' flint knives, — 
instruments which were evidently the result of 
h uma n workman ship , though very rude . Many 
of }'ou must have seen similar flint implements 
in the various collections of the remains of the 
aborigines of this country. The school chil- 
dren have them figured in the history of the 
United States which they study. And any one 



THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 15 

who has seen them, or even the figures, will 
admit that there can be no question as to 
whether they could have been formed by nat- 
ural agencies, such as the rolling and dashing 
of water, or the action of heat, together with 
water, or must have been formed by intelligent 
workmen. Human bones, though found in 
other caves with those of the extinct animals, 
were not found here. 

Eead, now, the record of this cave. It is, 
first, a geological period when the region is 
relatively lower than at present by about one 
hundred feet. An ingulfed river is flowing 
through those galleries. Its current is so swift 
as to bear in and strew along the bottom a 
thick bed of rolled gravel stones. Then the 
region is gradually elevated, — as some other 
coasts are now being elevated, while our own 
is being slowly depressed, — so that the river 
flows continually more slowly, and is able to 
deposit the mud of its turbid current. While 
it is depositing this mud, sometimes to the 
thickness of one foot, sometimes fifteen, it 
brings in, also, the bones of extinct animals and 
the implements of savage men together. Grad- 
ually the region is so raised, that the river 
channel has found another, a lower bed, and. 
the caves gradually become dry. And, finally, 
a long period — no one can tell how long — 



16 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

passes, while the water, saturated with lime, is 
trickling slowly from the roof, and forming the 
solid bed of stalagmite, which incrusts the 
whole. Stalagmite, of the same composition 
with marble, is at the same time more compact 
and harder. Arguing from geological analogies 
alone, if we are to do so, the deposits of this 
cave may be hundreds of thousands of years old. 

The discoveries of human remains in geo- 
logical strata are of two kinds, those made in 
the deposits of the River Nile, in its delta, and 
those made in the post-pliocene deposits of the 
River Somme, in France.* 

Between the years 1851 and 1854 some ex- 
tensive investigations were made in the delta 
of the Nile. The great river of Egypt, as is 
familiarly known, bears along in its current 
constantly a great deal of sediment, like our 
own Mississippi. The great deposit of this 

* "I have adopted the term post-pliocene for those strata 
which are sometimes called post-tertiary, or modern, and 
which are characterized by having all the embedded fossil 
shells identical with species now living. . . . These modern 
formations, thus defined, comprehend not only those strata 
which can be shown to have originated since the earth was 
inhabited by man, but also deposits of far greater extent and 
thickness, in which no signs of man or his works can be 
detected." — Lyell, Manual of Elementary Geology, chap. x. 

The post-pliocene, thus described, comprises, in general, the 
strata of sand, clay, and gravel lying immediately below the 
surface soil. 



THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 17 

sediment at the mouth, which has been forming 
ever since the river had an existence, is of a 
triangular form, its base along the coast being 
about a degree and one half long, and its per- 
pendicular, from base to apex, near Cairo, 
about the same. This is the delta. The in- 
vestigations were instituted by the Royal Soci- 
ety of England, to determine the nature, depth, 
and contents of the Nile mud. They were 
carried on by sinking shafts or borings in lines, 
and at different intervals, across the delta. 
One of these lines consisted of no less than 
fifty-one borings, made where the valley is 
about sixteen miles wide. Another consisted 
of twenty-seven borings, where the valley is 
five miles wide. These excavations brought 
up constantly, and from all depths, from near 
the surface to sometimes the depth of sixty 
feet, articles of human workmanship. So long 
as each excavation could be made with the 
shovel, which would be till the Nile water 
began to soak in, at the depth of twenty or 
twenty-five feet, entire articles were thrown up, 
such as jars, vases, pots, and, in one instance, 
a small human figure in burnt clay. The rest 
of the excavation, performed by artesian bor- 
ing, brought up only fragments ; these frag- 
ments, however, as just stated, came up from 
the lowest depth. The argument deduced from 
2 



18 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

this is as follows : The Nile mud is deposited 
very slowly ; it is estimated at the rate of from 
live to seven inches in a century. If the rate 
is assumed to be six inches, then a brick or 
piece of pottery, found at the depth of sixty 
feet, would be twelve thousand years old. 
Other estimates have made some of the articles 
discovered over thirty thousand years old. 

The most interesting of all the discoveries, 
and those which have given value and impor- 
tance to all the rest, are those of the Somme 
valley, in France. "Throughout a large part 
of Europe," says Mr. Lyell, "we find at mod- 
erate elevations above the present river chan- 
nels, — usually at a height less than forty feet, 
but sometimes much higher, — beds of gravel, 
sand, and loam, containing bones of the ele- 
phant, rhinoceros, horse, ox, and other quad- 
rupeds, some of extinct, others of living 
species. . . . The greater part of these deposits 
contain river shells, and have undoubtedly been 
accumulated in ancient river beds. These old 
channels have long since been dry, the streams 
which once flowed in them having shifted their 
position, deepening the valleys, and often 
widening them on one side." * These gravel 
and sand beds, thus it is evident, are very old. 

* Antiquity of Man, p. 93. 



THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 19 

Geologists have classed them in a period which 
they call post-pliocene, — i. e., a very recent 
period indeed, geologically, but ancient enough 
compared with man, as it has been heretofore 
thought, — a period when, although there were 
animals inhabiting the earth, there was yet great 
violence, and therefore many sudden changes, 
and man not yet introduced. The geologists 
have never pretended to set any age for these 
deposits in years. They have called them per- 
haps ten thousand, perhaps one hundred thou- 
sand, perhaps five hundred thousand years old. 
No one can tell. But lo ! in recent years, since 
the workmen have been digging into these 
beds, sometimes for gravel for roads, some- 
times for earth to build fortifications, and 
sometimes for brick loam, and large excava- 
tions have gradually been made, these flint 
implements, of which I have spoken, have been 
plentifully found, accompanying the bones of 
the old mammoth, rhinoceros, and other extinct 
animals. This was previous to the cavern dis- 
coveries, and the geologists lifted their eyes 
with amazement. They doubted and ques- 
tioned. They declared that the flints could not 
be the result of human workmanship. But it 
was not to be denied; and they at last ac- 
knowledged that man must have lived in 
Europe before those ancient deposits were' 



20 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

made, and in company with the primeval ele- 
phant, rhinoceros, and other animals, so long 
extinct that it was supposed they passed away 
long before the world was inhabited by man. 

To understand, and be properly impressed 
with, the antiquity of these beds, one has only 
to go into some of our deep railroad cuts, 
where first we see the layer of soil at the top, 
then the beds of loam, sand, and gravel, the 
surface, as we enter, gradually rising above our 
heads twenty, thirty, perhaps forty or fifty 
feet. AVe look at the different strata, first now 
laid open to the light by the Irishman's spade 
since that ancient day — in creation, as we 
have commonly thought — when the violence 
of heat, or water, or ice laid them there. You 
can read off the successive processes. Here a 
stratum of sand was laid. Soon it was bored 
into in one part by a violent tide, and a bed of 
gravel deposited. Here, again, some disturb- 
ing power, like some vast, pushing body, we 
might think, has mingled sand and gravel 
together. And here, again, fine sand and loam 
have silted down from deep and slowly-moving 
waters. Great changes ! And they speak to 
us of long, unknown periods, and tell of an 
unknown antiquity. So far as we know, from 
observed geological processes, they must have 
taken place hundreds of thousands of years ago. 



THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 21 

i So these beds in the valley of the Somme, 
whence now have come to light, with the bones 
of extinct mammoths and rhinoceroses, articles 
of distinct human workmanship. If the geo- 
logical position is true, then these human im- 
plements are the remains of a race inhabiting 
the world perhaps hundreds of thousands of 
years ago. 

These, briefly, are the discoveries. The 
question now is, Are these inferences true? 
Must we admit, from these scientific evidences, 
that man has inhabited the earth much longer 
than we have supposed, — much longer than the 
chronology of the common reading of the Bible 
will allow? You see the bearing upon the 
Bible, if the deductions from these premises 
are true. Either we must be able to correct 
our reading of its record, or else its character, 
as an inspired book, receives a severe shock. 

My position is this. I fear not for the Bible. 
That book has maintained itself, thus far, 
through all the storms of attack which have 
been levelled against it, and survived all the 
indifferent and hostile neglect with which it has 
been treated. It has been assailed in open 
attack of doubt and disbelief, by criticism, 
philosophy, and science, and it still remains 
intact. It shows no mark of encounter, save 
that its truths shine out more brightly, and 



22 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 



gleam with intenser li^lit, like the armor of the 
knight who has seen many battles. Not a 
shred from a leaf is gone, not an iota from a 
word. It is God's word, — has proved itself 
such, by the track of light it has made wherever 
it has gone in the world. I have not the least 
fear or anxiety for it in this issue, or in any to 
come. Do I then believe that there is nothing 
in these scientific discoveries ? No ; that is not 
my position. I do not know but that it may 
be proved by science that man has inhabited 
the earth for an unknown period of time, — 
from a great antiquity. But if so, then this 
must be true : we must look to our records 
again. We must re-read them with new 
scrutiny ; we must see if we have read them 
correctly. And if science does show for the 
human race a great antiquity, then at least we 
shall find that the sacred record does not deny 
it ; we shall find in the form or manner of the 
sacred chronology room to believe that it is so, 
and perhaps more than that. Perhaps we shall 
find, as we did with regard to astronomy and 
geology, that we had read our record hastily ; 
and I may say, at least with reference to geol- 
ogy, that if we had read it before with the 
thoughtfulness and scrutiny we ought, — if the 
church in past ages had taken proper care to 
preserve the true reading of the record, — we 



THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 23 

should not have received the discoveries of 
science as discoveries. All that science has 
disclosed with regard to the creation of the 
world, is revealed in the first chapter of Gen- 
esis, now that we have the lost key restored ; 
and we find that we always had the facts which 
geology has revealed. The truth simply is, 
that the church may not yet have the full and 
true reading of her sacred record. Twice has 
she been called to read it anew, and it may 
be the call will come again. The subject of 
chronology is confessedly not a clear question. 
The utterances of Scripture, from which it has 
been gathered, are confessedly not without 
difficulty ; i. e., they are not thoroughly under- 
stood. And why not the whole church be at 
fault in the understanding of the Scriptures? 
Single individuals always confess that they are ; 
and what is the church but the. sum of the 
individuals ? Their added deficiencies will not 
complement one another into a perfect whole. 
If no one individual is able to pronounce that 
he has possessed himself of all the truth of 
revelation as it is and as it should be, then 
certainly the whole church cannot. And it is 
one firm article in the creed of the church, — 
our own branch of it particularly, — that all the 
light in revelation has not yet been opened up.* 

* Cf. John Robinson's parting advice to the pilgrims of the 
Mayflower. 



24 EVENINGS WITH TUE BIBLE. 

My position is that of patience. I will wait. 
Perhaps we have not 3-et all the facts science is 
going to give us. Perhaps present appear- 
ances, even, will be modified. Perhaps new 
light will come from some quarter, which will 
show that inferences now drawn are not the 
proper and correct conclusions. Once, the 
savans engaged in research among the monu- 
ments of Egypt thought they had made a dis- 
covery which settled this very point. They 
published to the world that they had found a 
temple still standing on the banks of the Nile, 
which bore certain marks of having been built 
in an almost inconceivable antiquity. The 
world was amazed, and the church, for the 
moment, stood aghast. But a little while, and 
what happened ? Closer investigation revealed 
the fact, beyond dispute, that the temple was 
built by the famous Cleopatra, as late as the 
time of the Roman Cresars ! Problems are not 
always solved in a day. Secrets do not al- 
ways bring their revelation in their immediate 
train, nor does the morning sun appear, after 
the darkness of the night, a sudden, bright 
flash in the east. It is well always neither 
to be in haste in pronouncing upon alleged 
facts and discoveries, nor in haste to let go, 
and regard as overthrown, the old and the 
good. 



THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 25 

But I am not yet satisfied that these deduc- 
tions are true. I do not deny the facts, so far 
as they are established, nor any argument 
which may be conclusively derived from them. 
I do not deny the science of such men as Lyell 
and his confreres. But their facts and science 
are one thing, and their reasoning another. I 
may receive their facts, but doubt their con- 
clusions. 

Let us examine. You will notice that the 
argument for the antiquity of man rests upon a 
twofold basis. 

I. The place in geological period which the 
human remains discovered occupy. 

II. Their association with the bones of ex- 
tinct animals. 

The first of these is by far the most formi- 
dable. I must confess I feel a great respect 
for the pronunciamentos of such men as Lyell, 
when they speak of the strata of the earth, or 
of any geological period, or of the antiquity of 
any particular portion. When Mr. Lyell visits 
the valley of the Somme, and tells me, from his 
own observation, that the sand and gravel pits 
at Amiens and Abbeville belong to that period 
of great change called the diluvial, succeeding 
the period, ages upon ages, when the earth was 
preparing for man by the deposition of its coal 
beds, limestone, and marbles, — when genera 



26 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

of animals and other living creatures existed 
which have not, and could not have, continued 
to our own time, — yet preceding that in which 
man made his appearance, as heretofore thought, 
and are of very great antiquity, I cannot hesi- 
tate to receive his testimony. He is able to 
pronounce upon their place in geologic time 
and order. 

And when I read the evidence from such a 
discovery as that of Brixham Cave, — when I 
see the proof of great geologic change, the 
great elevation of the cave above its former 
comparative level, — and think of the time 
which seems needful for the tilling up of the 
cave with gravel, and the deposition of the 
bone-earth, and the incrustation by stalagmite 
on the top, I am impressed with a feeling of 
great antiquity. But, after all, the question is, 
How much is certainly known from these ap- 
pearances ? Are there not analogies upon both 
sides? If we have, in general, slow rates and 
long times for geological changes, have we not 
at other times very rapid, even sudden and 
violent changes ? There have frequently been 
sudden changes in the level of particular 
regions. Our own Mississippi valley has ex- 
hibited this phenomenon. So have islands in 
the Mediterranean Sea. A very rapid sub- 
sidence of our own coast, especially that of 



THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 27 

South Carolina, is taking place. The General of 
our forces now operating before Charleston,* we 
are told, has been seriously incommoded by the 
encroachments of the sea since his troops have 
landed. The same is true on the coast of Nor- 
way, as noticed by Mr. Lyell himself. The ele- 
vation, then, of theBrixham Cave may have been 
sudden. It does not necessarily imply long time. 
So the washing in of the gravel, and deposition 
of the mud. We, who live by the sea shore, 
have become familiar with the power of water 
in changing beds of gravel and moving about 
stones of considerable size. One winter storm 
sometimes changes the whole form, and appear- 
ance of our beach. An illustration of the fact 
that a torrent will transport or w wash " gravel, 
and the rapidity with which it will do it, 
occurred in my own experience, only a few 
weeks since, in the valley of the Mohawk, 
The morning of the day had been rainy ; some- 
times it poured in heavy showers. At noon 
we took the cars. We had not ridden thirty 
minutes before we were stopped by a bed of 
gravel, laid across the track within the previous 
two or three hours by a mountain brook, which 
had been changed into a torrent. The train 
was detained four hours while a gang of men 
were digging it through. The gravel in the 

* October, 1863. 



28 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

Brixham Cave was carried there by violence, by 
all the evidence. How long time, then, may it 
have taken? And with a current charged as 
full as possible with mud, how long would it 
take to deposit one, or even fifteen feet, in a 
confined spot, a kind of reservoir in which it 
was detained, and had chance, as was evidently 
the case, to make extraordinary deposit? 

I do not know at what rate stalagmite forms 
under a dripping roof, but it cannot be a very 
slow one. Suppose water, holding in solution 
as much salt as possible, were dripping con- 
stantly through the roof of this house, how 
long would it take to form an inch of salt over 
the floor? Would it take many centuries, or 
even one, to form a thickness of fifteen inches? 
To be sure, water charged with lime does not 
hold nor deposit so much as this ; nevertheless, 
it may deposit very rapidly. After all, there- 
fore, when we reflect, we cannot see that it 
certainly follows that the deposits in the Brix- 
ham Cave are. of great antiquity. It is possible 
that they are comparatively modern. 

So in the valley of the Somme. The locality 
where the flint implements are found is not far 
from the sea. It appears to be in an old es- 
tuary. Who can tell what incursions of the 
sea may not have done there? Or who can 
tell how long ago it is since that coast was also 



THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 29 



elevated, — and it must have been at the same 
time with the English coast opposite, where 
the Brixham Cave is, — and the Somme, having 
recently, as a mountain torrent, brought down 
these beds of gravel, has now cut through them 
to a lower bed ? Or who can tell that the 
geologic period, to which these beds apparently 
belong, is so very ancient ? Cuvier, and those 
following him, determined these diluvial strata 

— the post-tertiary, as they used to be called 

— to be anterior to man, and hence very old, 
because no remains of man were found in 
them. Suppose, now, that human remains are 
found in them, Cuvier could pronounce again. 
Would he say, that we are to argue that the 
human remains are very old ; or that the beds 
are not so old as they have been thought 
to be? These strata were put back into a 
great antiquity, for the reason alone that no 
human remains were found in them, while 
other remains were. What kind of reasoning, 
then, is it to say, " These beds are very old ; 
these remains, therefore, must be very old?" 
Mr. Prestwich, an authority whom Lyell him- 
self often quotes, said, in a report to the Royal 
Society in 1859, that he did not consider that the 
facts, as they then stood, — and no additional 
discoveries have since been made, — of neces- 
sity carried man back in past time more than 



30 E VEXING S WITH TEE BIBLE. 

they brought forward the great extinct animals 
(and the same is true, of course, with regard 
to the strata in which they are found) towards 
our own time, the evidence having reference 
only to relative, and not to absolute time ; and 
he was of opinion that many of the later geo- 
logical changes may have been sudden, or of 
shorter duration than generally considered.* 

The evidence, then, at this, the strongest 
point, we must say, is not conclusive. 

But what shall we say of the Nile delta ? It 
is found by experiment that the river throws 
down a certain amount of inundation mud each 
year. It is assumed that that has been its rate 
from the first; and, therefore, when a boring 
reaches the depth of sixty or seventy feet, and 
yet only inundation mud is found, a simple 
arithmetical computation is made, and its age 
declared ; and if remains of human workman- 
ship are found at that depth, it casts no suspi- 
cion upon the conclusion, but proves the anti- 
quity of the race. Now, evidently, the rate of 
deposit of a few years at the present time may 
not be, and in all probability is not, the rate of 
earlier years, especially of the earliest. When 
a river was ploughing out its channel, on the 
first upheaval of a country from its ocean bed, 
it must have borne great quantities of soil in 

* Westminster Review, October, 1860. 



THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 31 

its current, to deposit where the waters became 
still or moved slowly. It would seem natural, 
as a river grew older, that the material which 
it could take up in its course would diminish in 
quantity. How can there be, in the course of 
the Nile, that material to-day to be taken up 
by its current which there was forty centuries 
ago? In some places it has found a rocky 
bed, and from those places, as fast as the bed 
has been reached, the supply has practically 
ceased. And, although Mr. Lyell states that 
every where in these sections the sediment 
passed through was similar in composition to 
the ordinary Mle mud of the present day, 
except near the margin of the valley, where 
thin layers of quartzose sand, such as is some- 
times blown from the adjacent desert by violent 
winds, were observed to alternate with the 
loam (p. 34), it is not easy to understand how 
the deposits in the Nile valley must not be 
greatly affected by the desert sand. Desert 
sand has filled in many feet deep in the vicinity 
of the pyramids at Ghizeh, and at Denderah, 
and Luxor, the first and second of these being 
upon the west, and the third upon the east side 
of the river. The disclosure of many of the 
ancient ruins, upon both sides of the river, has 
been at the cost of a vast amount of sand ex- 
cavation. Mariette's excavations, in 1852, in 



32 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

front of the sphinx, near the pyramids, were 
so extensive as to disclose a paved dronios, 
leading to a large wall, which seemed to have 
formed a court around the sphinx. The pave- 
ment was twenty-four feet below the top of the 
wall. In 1858, only six years later, this dro- 
mos was covered again with sand.* If sand 
has been laid to such depths upon the banks of 
the river by the wind, how can the river itself 
have escaped receiving vast quantities ? How 
can it be that the valley deposits are not, in 
considerable proportion, wind-brought desert 
sand ? 

Mr. Lyell notices the suggestion that the 
Nile has wandered to and fro over its valley, 
undermining its banks on the one side, and 
filling up old channels on the other ; and an- 
swers that, "in historical times, the Nile has, 
on the whole, been very stationary, and has 
not shifted its position in the valley." But 
there is certainly some evidence to the con- 
trary. The eastern or Pelusiac arm of the 
Nile is now a mere canal, but it is commonly 
supposed to have been formerly navigable for 
fleets. This opinion, Professor Robinson says,f 
is based upon a passage in Arrian, where he is 



* Austrian Lloyd's Hand Book for Egypt, p. 68. 
f Bib. Researches, Vol. I., App., note xii. 



THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 33 

describing the expedition of Alexander against 
Memphis. From Pelusium, Arrian says, Al- 
exander ordered part of his troops to sail with 
the fleet up the river to Memphis, while he, 
with the remainder, marched through the des- 
ert to Heliopolis, having the Nile on the right 
hand.* It does not certainly follow from this 
that the Pelusiac arm of the Nile was then nav- 
igable, and that Alexander's fleet did sail up it ; 
but so it has always been understood, and the 
view gains probability from the fact that Lake 
Serbonis, east of Pelusium, well known in an- 
cient times, has become wholly dry land.f If, 
then, this is true, certainly great changes have 
been going on with regard to the bed of the Nile. 
It will be remembered that Cairo was founded 
about A. D. 969. "At the time, and long after 
Cairo was founded, the Nile ran more to the 
eastward, as Mr. Lane has shown, under its 
western walls." \ The space between Cairo 
and the Nile varies between a mile and a mile 
and a half in breadth. And this variation in 
its course the Nile has made in less than nine 
hundred years. In other words, the Nile is 
constantly moving to and fro across its valley, 

* Arr. Exp. Alex. 3 : 1. 4. 
t Encyc. Brit., art. Egypt. 

% Rawlin. Herod., Vol. II., p. 6, note signed, G. W. (Sir 
Gardiner Wilkinson). 

3 



34 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

and has been always running its great furrows 
through the soil of its delta, and turning to the 
bottom whatever has lain at the top. Would 
it be surprising, then, if some of the fragments 
of pottery which have been found at depths of 
sixty and seventy feet were even of Roman 
manufacture, as has been asserted by some? 
Mr. Lyell himself remarks, that the amount of 
matter thrown down by the waters, in different 
parts of the plain, varies so much, that to 
strike an average, with any approach to accu- 
racy, must be most difficult (p. 37), and yet 
proceeds at once to assume an average of six 
inches to the century. When we take, how- 
ever, this variation into consideration, and 
remember also the variety of agencies which 
have been at work, — the earthquake power, by 
which Cairo was once nearly destroyed,* the 
geological change of level, by the subsidence 
of the coast along the Mediterranean, and the 
elevation of the region about Suez, and that 
overwhelming flood of the Xile which must 
have occurred when it burst its rocky barriers 
at Silsilis, some time between the twentieth 
and fourteenth centuries, B. C.,f the basis for 
any important argument as to the antiquity of 
the remains found in the delta, seems very slight. 

* Encyc. Brit., art. Cairo, 
t Encyc. Brit., art. Egypt. 



THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 35 

Our savans are sometimes very hasty in their 
conclusions. This seems to me to be their 
fundamental error at the present time. Lyell, 
Huxley, Darwin, and all — they are rushing on 
at highest speed to find a conclusion : as though 
it were always possible, and necessary, to reach 
immediately a final result — the goal of their 
labors. 

What has already been said upon the anti- 
quity of the diluvial strata, is an answer to the 
argument from the association of the bones of 
long extinct animals with the human remains. 
A great antiquity has hitherto been attributed 
to these animals. Why? Because, first, no 
trace of mention in history has ever been found 
of them ; and, secondly, never till now have 
human remains been discovered with them. 
But, certainly, the first reason is not a very 
substantial one. The men with whom they may 
have been known and contemporary may not 
have been at all an historical people. It is not 
long, comparatively, since Europe emerged 
from an unhistorical darkness. What the Ro- 
mans did not know of the earlier people of 
Europe we do not know. One of these prom- 
inent, extinct animals, however, was still in 
existence when Gesar conquered Gaul.* How, 

* The Bos Urus. The fact is frankly confessed by Mr. 
Lyell himself, p. 14. 



36 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

then, is it known that the others had been lono- 
extinct ? Some of them might then have been 
in existence, but, not being seen by Csesar 
were therefore not mentioned by him. At the 
beginning of this century, another of these 
extinct animals, a mammoth, or primeval ele- 
phant, was found freshly preserved, flesh and 
all, encased in ice, at the mouth of the River 
Lena, in Siberia. So perfect was its preserva- 
tion, that when its crystalline sepulchre was 
opened, the clogs made a meal upon its flesh. 
Who can believe that an animal so preserved 
can have been very long extinct ? — that many 
ages have passed since he met with his cold 
death and burial? The simple fact that all 
snow and ice in the northern regions partakes 
of a slow, glacial motion, by which constantly 
the outer fringe is pushed into the sea, and 
broken off into icebergs and fields of ice, de- 
monstrates that his extinction cannot be referred 
to a very remote period. 

Here I will close the line of argument. It 
is brief, but sufficient, I trust, to convince my 
hearers that we have no reason yet to fear for 
the Scripture because of any thing which 
bears upon the question of its inspiration from 
this quarter. The conclusions of the savans 
are precipitate. As yet, they have no solid 
ground for assigning to the human race a 



THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 37 

greater antiquity than that which has been thought 
to be authorized by the Bible. And even, I re- 
peat, there is no reason for anxiety for the Bible, 
though the evidences now accumulated should 
be increased by farther discovery, until it is a 
certainty, so far as circumstantial evidence can 
make it, that man existed on the earth one 
hundred thousand or five hundred thousand 
years ago, and we must admit it as a fact of 
science, proved beyond question. There are 
independent evidences that the Bible is the 
inspired word of God. To my mind, it would 
matter not if some small mistakes and .errors 
were to be found upon its pages. I could more 
easily admit and believe, that in the great lapse 
of time since it has been committed to the 
hands of man, and compelled to pass through 
so many transcriptions and translations, such 
had crept in, and were now there to be found, 
stumbling-blocks in the way, than I could 
understand how a book, not of divine origin 
and inspiration, could come into existence, and 
have the place this book holds among men, 
and, above all, could have accomplished the 
work in the world it has accomplished. To 
my mind, the evidences of revelation do not 
exist now so much in the evidences of a verbal 
inspiration, and of miraculous deeds — though 
these must not be wanting : it would be a fatal 



38 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

absence — as upon the marvellous work which 
the Bible has wrought in civilizing and enlight- 
ening men, breaking off their bonds of im- 
morality and iniquity, enabling them to live 
better and more exalted lives, and inspiring 
them with a hope of a pure, rational, and 
blessed immortality. Had it done nothing more 
than a volume of Homer or Herodotus, Plato 
or Shakspeare, in the world, then should we 
have been certain that it was not an inspired 
volume ; then would assertions of inspiration, 
and all testimony from its purity, truth, and 
miracles, have been of no avail. 

But I do not expect to find serious errors 
and mistakes. I expect, if the evidences ever 
compel us to believe in the great antiquity of 
man, to find, on a closer scrutiny of the sacred 
record, that we ought always to have known it ; 
as in the case of the account of the creation ; 
or to find, at least, as in the case of astronomy, 
that there is nothing to forbid the belief. 

Patience, then, my friends. The truth will 
certainly manifest and vindicate itself in the 
end ; and God has not made two records, the 
one to contradict or weaken the other. The 
Bible is the word of God, and it will only 
shine as such more and more brightly as time 
shall roll on. The revelations of science, in 
the end, will only corroborate its assertions. 



THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 39 

We may, therefore, say to Science, God speed 
you in your work ; but let not your votaries 
stop by the way to make hasty and false con- 
clusions, and cast wayside reproaches upon 
a revelation which is surely from God, and 
which will stand, every jot and tittle, until the 
heavens and earth shall pass away. 



40 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 



THE MOSAIC RECORD OF CREATION IX THE 
LIGHT OF GEOLOGY. 

We will examine, this evening, the Mosaic 
account of the creation of the world, in the 
light of Geology. This account is given in the 
first chapter of Genesis. It is the beginning 
of the Bible. It relates that " In the beginning 
God created the heaven and the earth ; " that 
this he did in six successive stages or days, the 
last and crowning work of all being the creation 
of man. 

Within the last seventy-five years has come 
into existence the science of Geology. Men, 
turning their attention to the structure and for- 
mation of the globe, have, by observation and 
study, gradually become able to read its story 
from its own bosom, written in the rocks and 
strata of its surface by the life and event of the 
successive ages. This new-born science, one of 
the Baconian philosophy, and one of the many 
monuments which time has erected, and still 
will erect, to the honor of that great man's 
name, has turned back the strata of the earth, 



THE MOSAIC RECORD. 41 

like the leaves of a great volume, and read the 
record as there written from the beginning. 

Some of you, perhaps, will ask if this record 
is reliable? Beyond question it is, saving the 
weak and hasty conclusions of men. I am a 
believer in Geology. Every man must be if he 
believes in his own powers and the processes 
of his own mind. No man can help believing 
that every thing or fact must have had a cause, 
and that like effects must have had like causes. 
You have cut through a log with an axe. You 
know the marks which the axe made in cutting. 
You walk in the woods, and find another log 
bearing precisely similar marks. You say that 
that log was cut by an axe, and nothing in the 
world would persuade you that it was not. You 
are familiar with the effects and marks of run- 
ning water. You have seen brooks in the 
spring, when they have been turned into tor- 
rents for a time by the melting snow or rains ; 
and when they have subsided, you have seen 
what has been left as its traces. Some day, 
when you are upon a country ramble, you find 
on a mountain side the dry bed of a torrent. 
You never saw it before ; yet you have no hes- 
itancy in pronouncing what it is, and no one 
would be able to convince you that that wild and 
crooked furrow, with rocks laid bare and clean, 
sods undermined, and the long grass trailing 



42 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

always in one direction, and piles of soil and 
sand deposited regularly here and there, was 
not the effect of running water. So, being ac- 
quainted with the effects, generally, of water, 
and ice, and lire, any one would be able to say, 
descending a deep pit, or entering a railway cut, 
and passing the strata, or layers, of sand, clay, 
and gravel, "These must have been deposited 
under the action of water ; " and on arriving at 
the rock, "Here is the action of both water 
and heat." I remember being once struck my- 
self with the ease with which one may some- 
times read this stony record, and how con- 
vincing are its declarations. It was by the sea- 
side, on our easternmost New England shore, at 
a point where the Old Red Sandstone crops out. 
I had stepped down upon a little pebbly beach 
which was made on the shore, having at one 
end a projecting point of the Old Red Sand- 
stone rocks, and at the other a perpendicular 
cliff. I walked along the beach till I came to 
the foot of the cliff, and looked up. There, 
upon its face, was told its story — the most tell- 
tale face I ever saw. The whole cliff was com- 
posed of stones, which had been rounded like 
the larger pebble-stones upon the beach, cement- 
ed together chiefly by lime. Here, thought I, 
in a short chapter is a long history. All these 
rounded stones are fragments. They were once 



THE MOSAIC RECORD. 43 

part of the great body of rock crust of the 
earth. By some mighty convulsive power, 
through a long series of action probably, they 
were broken off. For centuries they were 
washed and rolled in the sea, till they obtained 
this rounded form. Then, or by that process, 
they were conveyed hither from a distance, we 
know not how great, for they are foreigners 
here — they do not belong to the rock of this 
region. Then they formed the bed of a lime- 
stone stream ; or water, saturated with lime- 
stone, found means to trickle through the mass 
for an inconceivably long period of time, to 
form the nut-white matrix. And now, at last, 
they have been lifted by some upheaving power, 
showing this clean-broken face thirty or forty feet 
high. I turned away with a profound sense of 
the antiquity of the soil I was treading upon. 
The record was too plain and straightforward 
to gainsay. 

Notwithstanding all this, some have main- 
tained, and still maintain for aught I know, 
that the earth was created just as it is, with the 
strata as they are, layer upon layer ; all the 
rocks with their enclosed fossils, and the 
great beds of coal with their included impres- 
sions of monstrous leaves, and forms of branches, 
and trunks of trees. All I have to say with 
regard to such a position is, that God might 



44 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

have created all things as they are, or as they 
were when Adam first opened his eyes upon 
the world — it is clearly possible that he might, 
in his omnipotence ; but it is wholly incredible 
that he did, and quite clear that he did not. 
TTe shall do violence to the faculties of reason 
and intelligence which he gave us, to think 
that he did. You find an empty shell upon 
the sea-shore. You believe that not long since* 
a living creature inhabited it. It would be 
irrational and absurd to believe otherwise. Xo 
shell ever exists without a living creature for its 
inhabitant and builder. But now suppose you 
go into a marble or limestone quarry, and as 
the workmen split open the rock, you find just 
such another shell embedded in and become a 
part of the rock. What will you say? That 
it did not originate in the same way? Will 
you say that it was made so, a full-grown shell, 
in and part of the rock? Or, suppose you take 
your spade and begin to dig in some old burial- 
ground — let it be on old Burial Hill in Plym- 
outh, if you please. At the first thrust of 
your spade through the sod, you turn up the 
bones of some poor dog that has chanced to die 
there — at least they are, bone for bone, pre- 
cisely like a dog's bones. Do you doubt that 
they were once clothed with flesh, and formed 
some poor Trusty or Fido, in his day as smart 



THE MOSAIC RECORD. 45 

and faithful a dog as any other? Not at all. 
You dig on. In a little while the spade throws 
up a human skull, or an arm. Ah ! you say, 
I have struck some old and forgotten grave. 
These are the bones of a human being, who 
once lived, and breathed, and walked this earth, 
and had his cares, and joys, and sorrows in his 
day, as really as we do now. Perhaps he was 
one of the Puritans, and came over in the May- 
Flower, and worshipped in the old flat-roofed 
log meeting-house that once stood hard by. At 
any rate, these are the bones of some old set- 
tler. There can be no doubt about that. You 
dig again. I do not know the geological struc- 
ture of that hill. Probably it is a bed of dilu- 
vium resting on primitive rock. But we will 
suppose it is not, and that you next strike a bed 
of marl. The spade throws out sea mud and 
shells. Ah ! say you again, these were once at 
the bottom of the sea. This mud is precisely 
like that on the flats of the harbor yonder, and 
these shells are the same with those you will 
find yonder with living creatures in them. 
These, no doubt, once had living creatures in 
them, and were washed by the water of the sea. 
No doubt about that. And so you go on, the 
spade in turn throwing up the bones of animals 
and the shells of mollusks still living, then 
the bones of extinct animals in gravel, then, 



46 EVENING S WITH THE BIBLE. 

exchanging the spade for the pick and drill, the 
shells embedded in chalk and soft limestone, 
then the fossils of the harder rocks. At what 
point will you stop, saying " These must have 
belonged to living creatures once," and begin 
to say " These never belonged to living creatures, 
but were made here just as they are?" At no 
point. The same reason continues for believing 
that each newly-found bone, shell, and fossil 
belonged to a once living creature, as for be- 
lieving that the last did. God's works tell us 
as true a story as his word.* 

This being premised, we are ready to look at 
the Mosaic record of the creation, and see how 
it reads under the light of Geologv. 

The old understanding of the Mosaic record 
was, that it taught the creation of the world — 
sun, moou, stars, and all — out of nothing, in six 
ordinary da}'s — six days of twenty-four hours ; 
and, since common chronology makes the human 
race but about six thousand years old, that the 
world consequently is only about that age. 
When, therefore, the geologists began to affirm 
that the world must be older than six thousand 
years ; that in fact it must be looked upon as 
hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of years 
old ; moreover, that its process of formation from 

* See Hugh Miller, First Impressions of England, pp. 
348-350. 



THE MOSAIC RECORD. 47 

a primal and elementary state, the formless and 
void state of the Mosaic account, bore every 
mark of being natural, i. e., by the operation 
of mediate forces and those now in existence ; 
and, therefore, the creation of the world, as it 
now is, could not have been a work of short, 
direct, miraculous action on the part of the 
Creator, the ideas of people received a shock. 
They were so fixed in the view that the Bible 
plainly taught that the world was made out of 
nothing in six common days ; that therefore the 
mountains and rocks of the earth, and every 
thing in them, are now just as they were in the 
day of the creation ; that any hint that the 
world was not made in six common days, or 
that it was much older than six thousand years, 
seemed to them rank infidelity, and an open, 
hostile attack upon the Bible. 

Still, so long ago as 1804, — the first of this 
century, — according to Hugh Miller, Dr. Chal- 
mers, the famous preacher of the Free Church 
of Scotland, then a young man, took occasion 
to say, in a public lecture, that this feeling was 
wrong. " There is a prejudice," said he, " against 
the speculations of the Geologist, which I am 
anxious to remove. It has been said that they 
nurture infidel propensities. It has been alleged 
that Geology, by referring the origin of the 
globe to a higher antiquity than is assigned to 



48 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

it by the writings of Moses, undermines our 
faith in the inspiration of the Bible, and in all 
the animating prospects of the immortality 
which it unfolds. This is a false alarm. The 
writings of Moses do not fix the antiquity of the 
globe" This is true, and thus early was it seen 
by that clear-sighted man. The new discov- 
eries did not affect the Mosaic record at all, did 
not bear inimically upon its inspiration in the 
least. They only affected the common under- 
standing of that record. They jostled the old 
ideas. But the church commonly thought that 
inspiration was assailed, and it began to look 
about itself. It soon perceived that it was not 
possible to call in question the facts of Geology. 
What was then to be done? But one course 
lay open to pursue. The church must examine 
again its record, and see if it had been read 
aright. 

The church immediately gave itself to this 
work, and forthwith a multitude of schemes 
were invented for the reconciliation of the two 
records, the Mosaic and the Geologic. It was 
thought for one thin^ — and this view became 
quite prevalent — that the first and second 
verses, "In the beginning God created the 
heaven. And the earth was without form and 
void ; and darkness was upon the face of the 
deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon 



THE MOSAIC RECORD. 49 

the face of the waters," were introductory, and 
described a previous state of the globe : and 
that the work represented as that of six days 
following, was a work of refitting the earth. 
At last it was suggested that the word day was 
used metaphorically, meaning an indefinite 
period, or age ; and many passages were ad- 
duced in which the term appeared to be so used. 
This was very near the truth — so near that it 
satisfied the demands of the facts of Geology, 
and seemed to have the support of other Scrip- 
ture. It, however, was not exactly the truth, 
but led immediately to it. The word day is not 
used metaphorically, but literally, to mean an 
age, or indefinite period. A more thorough 
study of the original term has shown that, in 
the Hebrew mind and use, it was by no means 
confined in meaning to the solar or twenty-four- 
hour day. Its element of meaning was not a 
twenty-four-hour length of time, but a cycle, a 
going and coming again, of similar states and con- 
ditions, or of light and darkness. Cyclicity was 
the primary element, not duration . When a thing 
came, and while it remained, it was a day. For 
example, the time during which a nation was in 
adversity, was called the day of its humiliation 
(the cycle is, prosperity, adversity, prosperity) , 
and so its prosperity the day of its exaltation. 
The ordinary day seems to have been called so 
4 



50 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

from its being a cycle, either from evening to 
evening, or from morning to morning. It is 
said in Micah (iv. 1), "But in the last days it 
shall come to pass that the mountain of the 
house of the Lord shall be established in the 
top of the mountains ; " referring to those later 
times when Christ's kingdom shall have fully 
come. In verse 6 the prophet continues : "In that 
day, saith the Lord," — joining all these latter 
days into one, — a period or age, — the derived 
cyclical element of which is readily seen. We 
might multiply instances in illustration of this 
as the meaning and scope of the word, but it is 
not necessary. This discovery we owe to the 
labors of one of our own most distinguished 
scholars.* 

With this understanding, then, of the true 
import of the word day, Ave find, instead of a 
conflict and discord between the Mosaic and the 
Geologic records, a most wonderful harmony. 
We find that Geology, instead of infringing 
upon the authority and truthfulness of the Mo- 
saic account, only confirms them. Let us ex- 
amine. 

The Mosaic account tells us, first, that "In 
the beginning God created the heaven and the 
earth." This is introductory. It assigns the 

* Professor Taylor Lewis, Union College. See his remark- 
able volume, " Six Days of Creation." 



THE MOSAIC RECORD. 51 

work of creation to God, and distinguishes the 
account from heathen mythologies, which re- 
late that the earth was born of Night, and that 
Gods were born of the Sea, and men from 
Gods ; and from infidel assertions, which ascribe 
tUe work to chance, or declare matter to be 
eternal. Geology does not deny, though it can 
affirm nothing more distinctly than that an infi- 
nite and intelligent Omnipotence performed the 
work. 

The account next says, "And the earth was 
without form and void ; and darkness was upon 
the face of the deep." This is where Geology 
can hardly yet make an assertion, It is the 
region rather of Astronomy. And what has 
Astronomy told us? Curiously enough, from 
what their telescopes have revealed, Laplace 
and Herschel have maintained that the original 
form of the world, so far as science can reveal, 
must have been nebulous, or gaseous. The 
telescope seems to have revealed still forming 
worlds in distant space. A nebular cloud 
would be discovered. In a central spot con- 
centration would appear to be taking place. 
From that it was easy to go on, in imagination, 
to the complete concentration and organization 
of all the matter of the globe. What terms 
could better describe this nebulous state than 
" formless and void " ? 



bl EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

" And darkness was upon the face of the 
deep." This would be the case before any or- 
ganizing operation. " And the Spirit of God 
moved upon the face of the waters." It is sup- 
posed that the Hebrews had no term which 
would more aptly describe the nebular sea of 
matter than the term " waters ; " and, indeed, it 
is a question if any is needed. Such a term, in 
a primitive language, would very likely be a 
generic term, denoting any and all bodies of 
fluid substance. The first waters, then, are the 
nebulous material, previous to any work of or- 
ganization. Upon it the Spirit of God — his 
creative power — begins to act ; and notice the 
result. The next verse says, " And God said, 
Let there be light : and there was light." 
How remarkable ! Modern science has shown 
us that light is the first result of motion. If 
the waters of the second verse were this sup- 
posed sea of nebulous material, the first effect 
of divine working in it, in the creative process, 
would be li^ht ! 

" And God saw the light, that it was good : 
and God divided the light from the darkness. 
And God called the light Day, and the darkness 
he called Night. And the evening and the 
morning were the first day." God's naming is 
constituting. He constituted this period of 
first darkness and then light — the first day. 



THE MOSAIC RECORD. 53 

And here notice that it is the cycle — the con- 
trasted states of darkness and light — which is 
called " day ; " and that it could not have been 
a common twenty-four-hour day. Time is not 
measured here. There is no sun nor moon to 
measure it. It is only a state or period of 
darkness succeeded by light — the unmeasured 
continuance of the first act in this great drama 
of creation. And the work of this first day is 
what science tells us must have taken place in 
the first forming period; viz., the chemical 
combination of matter, according to its affin- 
ities, and its organization into form. Thus all 
the material of the globe, on its first creation, 
is in its nebular, gaseous form. The next step, 
evidently, is the union, of the different particles 
according to their affinities. The particles com- 
posing the rocks go together, the particles 
composing the different metals, and so of all 
the combinations. And according to the laws 
of Chemistry, we should have, as the result of 
all these combinations, an intensely heated, in- 
candescent mass. Chemical combination and 
concentration always evolve heat. 

Second day, or period. "And God said, 
Let there be a firmament in the midst of the 
waters, and let it divide the waters from the 
waters. And God made the firmament and 
divided the waters which were under the firma- 



o4 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

inent from the waters which were above the 
firmament ; and it was so. And God called the 
firmament Heaven. And the evening and the 
morning were the second day." If we under- 
stand by " waters " here, water properly, then 
in this period the globe is presented to us as in 
general covered with water ; and the creation 
of the firmament is doubtless the separation 
and location of the atmosphere around the 
globe, by which the fogs and clouds of vapor 
are borne up from the earth, and the blue 
arched appearance, called the heavens, is occa- 
sioned. But if we understand the term to 
refer, as before, to the nebulous matter, which 
has now become in part concentrated into the 
form of the globe, the work of this period is 
the separation of the concentrated mass from 
the body of nebulous matter — its individuali- 
zation. In either case, the language well de- 
scribes what Geology tells us must have taken 
place in this stage of the creative process. It 
tells us that the material of the earth's crust, in 
very great degree, previous to its present form, 
must have been held in solution by water ; that 
it was then deposited in strata ; and while the 
central heat was hardening some into rock at 
the bottom, the aspect of the surface must have 
been one wide waste of waters. This second 
day was the age of the sea. 



THE MOSAIC RECORD, 55 

For the work of the third day it is recorded : 
"And God said, Let the waters under the 
heaven be gathered together unto one place, and 
the dry land appear ; and it was so. And God 
called the dry land Earth ; and the gathering 
together of the waters called he Seas" (i. e., 
thus he constituted the continents, islands, and 
the seas) ; " and God saw that it was good. And 
God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the 
herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding 
fruit, after his kind, whose seed is in itself, 
upon the earth ; and it was so. And the earth 
brought forth grass, and herb, yielding seed 
after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, 
whose seed was in itself, after his kind ; and 
God saw that it was good. And the evening 
and the morning were the third day." 

This is the Mosaic record. Now what says 
Geology ? Geology tells us that the next stage 
in the process, after the deposition of strata, 
was the lifting up of the continents and islands, 
by a slow and gradual upheaval by an internal 
force. When the globe first took its form, we 
saw it a glowing, incandescent mass. Cooling 
gradually, its waters condense upon its surface. 
In the cooling process, the rock-mass, between 
the intense heat at the centre and the raging 
waters at the surface, is broken up and ground 
into sand and fine mud, and more or less held 



56 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

mingled with the waters. It is then deposited, 
and the lower deposits hardened again into 
rock, as we have seen. Then follows the lift- 
ing of some portions by the power of the heat 
within — which is by no means exhausted yet, 
as the volcanoes, and the constant elevations 
and subsidences of different portions of the 
earth's surface are ample evidence. The deeps 
of the sea, where continents now are, first be- 
came shallows. Then the muddy bottom ap- 
pears and becomes dry land. In some places 
the up-bending strata have necessarily broken, 
and in mountain forms the underlying crop out 
topmost. Here in Xew England, in one place, 
the lowest rock of all upon which the water- 
deposited strata had been laid, broke through 
the rest, and became what we call the White 
Mountains ; in another, the limestone strata, 
not wholly broken through, but thrust up in 
ridges, became the Green Mountains. Away 
on our western border, the fiery agency wrought 
with greater potency, and thrust up the lofty 
peaks of the Eocky Mountains. In process of 
time, except, of course, these loftiest peaks, 
which must be forever consigned to barrenness, 
the surface is clothed with vegetation. This is 
the natural order. The discoveries of Geology, 
however, do not reveal this earliest vegetable 
creation. So far as its discoveries say, animal 



THE MOSAIC RECOBD. 57 

life, after the type of the shell-fish, the crab, 
and the star-fish, was first. No vegetable re- 
mains are so early as these, except some sea 
weeds. But notice what geologists say. They 
say that of necessity plant life must have been 
first. Plant life is sustained by inorganic mat- 
ter — by soils, moisture, and the atmosphere. 
Animal life is not. It requires plant life to 
precede it. The geologists do not, therefore, 
regard the absence of vegetable remains, in the 
earliest period, as absolute evidence of the non- 
existence of plant life. Their order, therefore, 
is precisely that of the Mosaic record. And it 
would have been an objection to the Mosaic 
record, on the part of science, if it had not 
placed plant life first. Geology itself bearing 
testimony, the Mosaic record at this point is the 
superior witness of the two. 

Beside the necessity of previous plant life, it 
is easy to see how in those earliest strata, 
which were afterwards subjected to great heat, 
vegetable remains would be destroyed, while 
the shells and spines of mollusks and radiates 
would be preserved. This is the third period. 

The work of the fourth day is represented 
by Moses to have been the establishment of 
the sun, moon, and stars in the heavens, as 
henceforth the light-bearers of the earth, and 
the measurers of its time — its days, months, 



58 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

and years. Of this Geology, of course, tells 
us nothing. It cannot reveal when the sun be- 
gan to shine, nor when the atmosphere, heavy 
with vapor and gases, was clarified, and light 
from the sun, moon, and stars was first made 
to shine directly upon the earth. It can only 
testify when there was light from the existence 
of plant and animal life, but it cannot tell from 
what source that light came. You will notice 
that light was brought into existence at the 
very first. How it was maintained, especially 
in alternation with darkness, if it did so alter- 
nate, we do not know.* It is not declared. 
We have no concern with the question. But 
when we arrive at the work of the fourth day, 
we find that then the sun, moon, and stars are 
appointed to be light-bearers. The assertion, 
however, that " God made two great lights, the 
greater to rule the day, the lesser to rule the 
night; he made the stars, also," does not ne- 
cessitate the creation of them all at this period. 
The sun and moon may have long been cre- 
ated. It is now only that they are constituted 
lights. 

For the work of the fifth period the record 

* "And the evening and the morning were the first day," 
" second day," &c., does not necessarily mean alternating 
darkness and light. It may mean the closing of the work of 
one period, and the institution of that of the following. 



THE MOSAIC RECORD. 59 

says: "And God said, Let the waters bring 
forth abundantly the moving creature that hath 
life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in 
the open firmament of heaven. And God cre- 
ated great whales, and every living creature 
that moveth, which the waters brought forth 
abundantly, after their kind, and every winged 
fowl after his kind ; and God saw that it was 
good. And God blessed them, saying, Be 
fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the 
seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And 
the evening and the morning were the fifth 
day." 

Immediately after the age of mollusks, Geol- 
ogy tells us of a wonderful age of fishes, and 
following that an age of marvellous reptiles. 
From their long-time resting-places, their sep- 
ulchres in the sandstones and shales, have come 
forth multitudes of sharks and great fish, plated 
like our sturgeon with coats of mail, and such 
ugly, awkward monsters as the ptericthys of 
Hugh Miller — a creature shaped somewhat 
like a snow-shoe, with an arm at each side, 
and coated with a casing of thick, hard scales. 
Then follow the amphibious and monstrous rep- 
tiles, the huge megalosaurs, iguanodons, ichthy- 
osaurs, and plesiosaurs. When one reads in 
Job about the leviathan, that "the flakes of his 
flesh are joined together ; they are firm in them- 



60 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

selves . . . they cannot be moved. When 
he raiseth himself up the mighty are afraid. 
The arrow cannot make him flee ; sling stones 
are turned with him into stubble. He maketh 
the deep to boil like a pot. He maketh a path 
to shine after him ; " one can hardly resist the 
thought that reference is had to some one of 
these monsters, which Geology reveals to us 
as existing in the carboniferous age. Then the 
multiplicity and variety of life, as well as the 
wonderful forms of it, revealed as existing in 
this age by Geology, is astonishing. By the 
testimony of the rocks, the waters swarmed with 
swimming inhabitants, and the air was filled 
with flying creatures. But what is more won- 
derful, we have not yet the animals of the dry 
land. They are not yet mentioned in the Mo- 
saic record, nor do they yet appear in the Geo- 
logic. It is as if the land which has come into 
existence in these periods, and upon which veg- 
etation is flourishing upon a scale of magnificent 
grandeur, were hardly out of the water, and 
were yet mostly in the form of swamps and 
bogs. The period of land animals, according 
to the stony science, is the following. So it is 
according to the Mosaic account ! It is the 
sixth day of the record. 

Sixth day. "And God said, Let the earth 
bring forth the living creature after his kind, 



THE MOSAIC RECORD. 61 

cattle, and creeping (or prowling) thing (i. e., 
beasts of prey, not reptiles) , and beast of the 
earth after his kind; and it was so. . . . And 
God said : Let us make man in our image ; 
after our likeness ; and let them have dominion 
over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of 
the air, and over the cattle, and over all the 
earth, and over every creeping thing that creep- 
eth on the earth. So God created man in his 
own image, in the image of God created he 
him ; male and female created he them. . . . 
And the evening and the morning were the 
sixth day." This is the Scripture account. It 
is the sixth and last day of creation by that ac- 
count. What, now, says Geology? It is the 
last period of Geology ! Immediately after the 
age of the fishes and the great reptiles, is dis- 
covered the age of mammals and man ! In the 
upper and latest strata, next below the soil, lie 
the bones of mastodons, megatheria, elephants, 
rhinoceroses, hippopotami, hyenas, bears, 
wolves, beavers, horses, hogs, dogs, and so on ; 
all the variety of animals, both of living and 
of long extinct species. None of them are to 
be found in the previous age ; none of their 
remains are mingled with those of the huge 
reptiles. That age had wholly passed away. 
Some violent geologic changes had intervened 
before this age of land animals, and then, 



62 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

later, man came in. This is truly wonder- 
ful ! 

While penning these statements, I have had 
the latest geological works, especially the large 
and complete compendium of the science, by 
Professor Dana, published within the year, 
lying open before me, to carefully assure my- 
self, as I have proceeded step by step, and see 
that I fell into no errors. You may therefore 
depend, my hearers, upon these representations 
being in accordance with the last results of in- 
vestigation and discovery. And now that we 
have passed the two records in review one 
with the other, I ask if you will not say with 
me that the harmony which has appeared is not 
truly wonderful? The third, the fifth, and the 
sixth are the remarkable periods. "And God 
said, Let the waters under the heaven be gath- 
ered together unto one place, and let the dry 
land appear. And it was so." This was the 
third day. Looking into the corresponding 
geologic period, we see vast powers heaving in 
the bosom of the earth. The strata of the 
earth's surface are breaking and uplifting them- 
selves. A few points appear here and there as 
islands in the vast all-surrounding ocean, the 
forerunners of the continents. Slowly and 
through long ages they rise, coming, indeed, 
like the tide, with oscillations, rising for a time, 



THE MOSAIC RECORD. 63 

then for a time falling, and then rising again, 
till all stand out, each continent, nearly as now. 
How could language more accurately, as well 
as concisely, describe the process, than that of 
the Mosaic account, written thousands of years 
before any of the revelations of geological 
science were known? 

In the fifth day of the Mosaic record, the 
creative fiat fills the waters with swimming life, 
and the air with fowls. "And God created 
great whales, and every living creature that 
moveth, which the waters brought forth abun- 
dantly." Looking at the corresponding geo- 
logical period, what wonderful forms and vari- 
ety of life have we seen revealed ! Types of 
the varieties now known, and beside them the 
great cetaceans, amphibians, and reptilians. 
Now that we know from science the strange 
and multitudinous forms of watery life in that 
age, do we not see that the language of the 
record is well fitted to describe them in the 
mass and concisely ? Does it not seem to have 
been framed by one who knew of what he was 
speaking ? 

And in the sixth and last day are the crea- 
tions, first of land animals, then of man. In 
Geology, in the last period, it is the same. 
Could the harmony well be more uniform and 
exact ? 



64 EVENINGS 117/7/ THE BIBLE, 

Now, let us ask, what is the argument of this 
harmony? 

Here is an account of the creation of the 
world, written thousands of years ago. It is 
the most ancient writing in the world; the old- 
est and earliest record the world has. It was 
written thousands of years before there was a 
thought oi' such a seienee as (J oology. .Now, 
however, in these last days, this seienee has 
sprung into existence. It has turned over the 
stony leaves of the earth's crust, ami read their 
records, with some undoubted truthfulness, 
from tlu 1 earliest periods. And the story it 
tells in order, as near as is possible, is the story 
of this old written record ! You do not find 
the periods marked off with distinct divisions. 
That the written record does ; just as in some 
towns, you may look over the fields and see no 
boundary lines between them; they are not 
erected there ; they exist only in the written 
deeds and county registries. But you find the 
order and succession the same. 

If Geology is true, then does it not prove 
the Mosaic record true? There is no escaping 
such a conclusion. And if it proves it true, it 
proves it also inspired. For, if it is true, it is 
of necessity inspired. It is a description of 
events of which no man could, from the nature 
of the case, be witness ; and, therefore no tra- 



THE MOSAIC RECORD. 65 

dition of human origin could be handed down. 
It could only have originated with the Creator 
himself. He alone can be the Author of the 
account. 

And if the Bible is proved thus an inspired 
revelation in its very beginning, what is proba- 
ble with regard to the remainder ? 

We are told by some, in particular, that the 
books of Moses are unhistorical ; that they are 
the ancient records of that ancient people, the 
Hebrews, and, like the early history of every 
nation, they are mingled myth and tradition, 
and not to be at all received as sober, veritable 
history. But when science comes forward 
with her explicit testimony, and shows that the 
very first chapter of those books is inspired, 
what must we say is the likelihood with regard 
to the remainder. 
5 



EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 



THE NOACHIAN DELUGE AN HISTORICAL 
VERITY. 

Theee are those at the present day who 
have undertaken to pronounce the Five Books 
of Moses unhistorical. About thirty years ago, 
a distinguished German scholar and historian 
promulgated certain new principles of historical 
criticism. In accordance with these principles, 
he reconstructed the early history of Rome, 
giving the world a work in which, in his opin- 
ion, all that was mythic and legendary having 
been eliminated, a residuum of pure and solid 
history remained. A sad work was immedi- 
ately begun. The Goths and Vandals of liter- 
ature commenced their raid. This purifying 
process was to be applied in every direction. 
After Niebuhr had opened the way, a Wolf 
leaped into the field of Grecian poetry, and 
immediately Homer was transformed from one 
man into a series of men, and the Iliad and 
Odyssey were declared to be the work of many 
different minds, and the growth of several 
ages. Arnold, in England, followed in the 



THE NOACHIAN DELUGE. 67 

path with Latin history, and Grote with Gre- 
cian ; the latter, without doubt, using his great 
master's principles with more prudence and 
caution, so that, notwithstanding, in his work 
we have the best history of Greece yet extant. 
From these fields, others turned into biblical 
criticism ; and as Niebuhr had given the world 
a history of Rome in which there were no demi- 
gods, no heroes, no myths, no prodigies, — not, 
indeed, that there should be such in history ex- 
cept as legends and the early poetry of history, 
— and every thing was resolved to its purely 
historic value, so a Strauss gives us a life of 
Christ, from which all that is miraculous and 
supranatural is pruned away, and nothing per- 
mitted to remain as actual truth but what is 
rational, comprehensible, and explicable by the 
generation of to-day, upon natural and well- 
known principles ! The multitude which has 
thronged in this direction in Europe, and, in- 
deed, in America, is great. Every part of 
Scripture they have seized and subjected to 
their unsparing and purblind anatomy ; and 
now, at their hands, if we will believe it, there 
remains as veritable but a shred of the volume 
our fathers loved so well, and reverenced as the 
word of God. They have put it into their 
new machine of criticism, their quartz-crusher, 
and the portion which has come forth as a res- 



G3 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

id ue of the pure gold of history and divine 
truth is pitiably small. You have all, doubt- 
less, heard of one of these men, who, a mission- 
ary in the wilds of Africa, has been turning 
the crank of his mill upon the books of Moses. 
I refer to Bishop Colenso, who is just now 
enjoying his day of notoriety. He, and such 
like, have put the narrative of the Creation, the 
account of the Fall, the story of the Flood, the 
destruction of Sodom, the exodus from Egypt, 
the staving of the sun and moon at the com- 
mand of Joshua, &c, to the test of their trial, 
and lo ! they vanish into the thin air of legend 
and myth. 

One remarkable fact about this test of rational- 
ism is, that in the hands of the different members 
of its party it yields different results. Applied 
to Bible history, it proves a very thorough sol- 
vent, and washes away a vast deal that is un- 
sound and impure. But applied, at the hands 
of a Lepsius and a Bunsen, to the merest frag- 
ments of a fabling Egyptian Manetho, and the 
guesses of hieroglyphic readers from monumen- 
tal records, and these start up at once into all 
the magnitude and vigor of genuine history ! 

So far as the account of the creation is con- 
cerned, inspiration has found a new champion 
in the science of Geology, and, as we have 
seen, the Bible begins at least as the word of 



THE NOACHIAN DELUGE. 69 

God. The first chapter of Genesis is not only 
veritable history, but must have been derived 
from the direct revelation of God. 

We turn to-night to the story of the Deluge ; 
and I think it will as clearly appear, as in the 
case of the account of the creation, that it is 
not a mere myth and poetical legend of early 
Hebrew history, but a part of the genuine his- 
tory of the world. 

The event is related in the sixth, seventh, 
and eighth chapters of Genesis. Let me say, 
at the outset, that there are two things for 
which I am not going to contend. First, that 
the deluge was universal, in the sense in which 
we now should understand that term. Second, 
that pairs of all the different kinds of animals, 
birds, insects, and reptiles, in the whole world, 
were gathered into the ark. 

One acknowledged and undeniable law for 
the interpretation of the Bible, as of any other 
ancient writing, or any book whatever, is, that 
the language of any part, and of the whole, be 
received and understood in the sense in which 
it was used, or with the same extent of mean- 
ing, and that only, which it must then have 
necessarily had. This is too evident to need 
farther proof. It is only by this rule that we 
can properly interpret the language of our 
Saviour and his apostles, and evolve their teach- 



70 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

ings, as well as the poetry of Homer, the his- 
tory of Herodotus, and the philosophy of 
Plato. When, then, we find in this ancient 
account of the deluge the assertion that " the 
waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth ; 
and all the high hills that were under the 
whole heaven were covered, . . . and all flesh 
died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, 
and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creep- 
ing thing that creepeth upon the earth, and 
every man ; all in whose nostrils was the breath 
of life, of all that was in the dry land, died ; " 
the question arises, What really did this general 
and inclusive language mean with those who 
used it ? It is not for us to ask what it would 
mean now, but what did it mean then? And 
no one, probably, will dispute but that the ex- 
pressions "the whole earth," "all under the 
heaven," " all the living creatures in the earth," 
meant the whole earth as then known, and all 
under the heaven as then conceived and thought* 
to be the whole heaven, and all the living crea- 
tures that lived in that known world. We very 
well know that the world, as now known, was 
not the world of the ancients ; that their whole 
earth under the heavens was that portion of the 
world then inhabited ; that in their minds it was 
a flat surface, of small extent in comparison 
with its real magnitude, surrounded at its edge 



THE NO AC HI AN DELUGE. 71 

with a mingled impassable region of sky and 
ocean. And there is no difficulty in under- 
standing that the Holy Spirit, in inspiring the 
writers of those days, either directly, or in the 
way of superintendence, would leave them un- 
trammelled in the use of their own language, 
with all its figures and idioms, provided only 
that it conveyed the absolute truth to the mind 
at that time. When, therefore, we find such 
general expressions as these, we are to under- 
stand them as meaning their " whole world," 
&c, not ours. We should understand them as 
we know they must have understood them, with 
the limitations to their knowledge, unless we 
have reason to the contrary, as in the case of 
promises and prophecies, which were intended 
to mean more than was understood by those to 
whom they were first delivered, and the people 
of their times. There are many instances in 
which we are shown at once that these general 
absolute expressions are to be received in their 
limited sense. For example, it is said (Deut. 
ii. 25) that the fear of Israel should be put upon 
the nations under the whole heaven. So it is said 
that all countries came into Egypt to Joseph to 
buy corn (Gen. xli. 57) ; that the Queen of 
Sheba came to hear the wisdom of Solomon 
from the uttermost parts of the earth (Matt, 
xli. 42) ; that on the day of Pentecost there 



72 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

were Jews assembled at Jerusalem out of every 
nation under heaven (Acts ii. 5) ; and that the 
gospel was preached to every creature under 
heaven (Col. i. 23). Nothing is more obvious 
than that these expressions are not to be under- 
stood literally as we should understand them 
now, but as they were understood when used. 
Of course the Bible language had to be that 
which was used, and would be understood at the 
time its various parts were written, else it 
would not be the truth to the people of that 
time. Where the Queen of Sheba lived, was 
the uttermost parts of the earth in the mind 
of the Jew at the time of our Lord, though it 
would not be now to us. The fear of Israel, 
we know, was put upon all the surrounding 
nations, and we have no reason for supposing 
upon any others ; upon those people, for in- 
stance, who misrht then be inhabiting this un- 
known continent. They were all the nations 
under the whole heaven to the Jews. When 
this language was used to the Jews, it conveyed 
a precise idea to them, and the truth. We 
could not expect it to be taken into account 
what that phraseology might mean ages after- 
ward, and in different tongues and climes. 

When, then, it is said in the account of the 
deluge that " all the high hills that were under 
the whole heaven were covered, . . . and all 



THE NO AC HI AN DELUGE. 73 

flesh died ... all in whose nostrils was the 
breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, 
died," I do not feel myself bound to think that 
the whole heaven, as we should understand the 
phrase, was meant, nor all flesh. I am satisfied 
that it may, and beyond all question does, 
mean that portion of the earth then known and 
inhabited. The human population of the earth 
had not then become very great, nor, in any 
probability, very extended. We have no reason 
to suppose that it had spread very far in any 
direction from the primal centre of creation. 
What reason, then, for an absolutely universal 
deluge ? The demands of the case are met, if 
we understand only the populated region of the 
earth, — what was then the world to man, — to 
have been subject to the flood. 

Taking this view with regard to the extent of 
the deluge, of course there is no reason for 
supposing that pairs of absolutely all kinds of 
living creatures should be preserved in the ark. 
With the progress of knowledge, we have come 
now to know that the different kinds and species 
of animals, birds, insects, and reptiles, of those 
classes which would have been destroyed by 
the flood, arc very many. Sir Walter Raleigh, 
in his time, found it easy to show that the ark 
could accommodate pairs of all kinds of crea- 
tures, because there were but about ninety dif- 



74 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

ferent kinds then known. In the time of Buf- 
fon, the number had doubled. In 1856, the 
latest authority I have at hand, the number of 
species of known animals had become one 
thousand six hundred and fifty-eight ; of birds, 
six thousand two hundred and sixty-six ; of 
reptiles, six hundred and forty-two ; in all, 
eight thousand five hundred and sixty-six. In- 
sects we leave out of account. Passing by the 
difficulty, not to say the impossibility, of hav- 
ing creatures gathered from every part of the 
earth, from different climates, and widely sep- 
arated regions, — as would necessarily be the 
case if some of all kinds were to be preserved,* 
— we should find it sufficiently difficult to pro- 
vide for them in the ark. 

But if only that portion of the world inhab- 
ited by man was subjected to the catastrophe, 
why save any of the animals, and especially 
why save the birds, in the ark ? Why not leave 
the region to be populated again with these 
creatures from the surrounding regions ? First, 
for the convenience and comfort of man. The 
useful animals might be very long in distribu- 
ting themselves, by the laws of natural multipli- 
cation, over the depopulated country. It would 

* For example, the polar bear, the sloth of South Amer- 
ica, and the kangaroo of Australia, each of which is peculiar 
to its country. 



THE NOACHIAN DELUGE. 75 

be the shortest and easiest method of providing 
for the wants of the human family, even if it 
were not a necessity. But there was a neces- 
sity. It is now well understood, in natural 
science, that life exists by centres. For exam- 
ple, the rhinoceros has a central locality, from 
which it spreads to only a certain limit. So 
with birds, fishes, and vegetation. Naturalists 
call these central localities centres of distribu- 
tion. "We now know," says Hugh Miller, 
" that every great continent has its own peculiar 
fauna ('fauna' includes all kinds of animal 
life) ; that the original centres of distribution 
must have been not one, but many; further, 
that the areas or circles around these centres 
must have been occupied by their pristine 
animals in ages long anterior to that of the 
Noachian deluge." This being the case, it is 
easy to see that the fauna of any large district 
of the earth being destroyed, it would be im- 
possible to replace it wholly unless by new 
creation. What was required, then, was that 
the fauna of that region only affected by the 
deluge should be preserved ; and for this we 
can readily conceive that the ark, whose di- 
mensions, at the least calculation, gave it a 
capacity of stowage equal to that of eighteen 
ships of the line of twenty-two hundred tons 
each, might have been sufficient. All the 



76 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

animals, birds, insects, and reptiles referred to, 
unquestionably, were those of that region, 
which was all the world under the whole heaven 
to the men of that day, and those animals, <£c, 
were all the living creatures of the world. 

We come now to the fact of a deluge. The 
question is, " Is the deluge a truth of history?" 
We believe and assert that it is. What are our 
reasons ? 

I. The strong probability which 7 arises from 
the fact of its place and relations in this ancient 
record, which has been proved, in part, to be 
inspired, and which we believe to be inspired in 
the whole. If it is inspired in the whole, of 
course the story of the deluge is a historic fact. 
Inspiration is history, or truth, upon divine 
authority. But the question of inspiration Ave 
are waiving for the time being, except so far as 
we prove it for ourselves. 

This account, then, has a place in an ancient 
record, which forms a part of the most ancient 
history we have. There are no other writings 
so old as the book of Genesis, and after it, the 
remaining books of Moses, unless it be the 
book of Job. There is no other than this 
Hebrew hand which carries back the torch of 
history so far, and throws so certain light. 
This is the only history Ave have throwing any 



THE NOACHIAN DELUGE. 77 

light upon the origin and distribution of the 
races and early nations. Scientific research 
starts from it, and it is a fact of no little impor- 
tance in our argument that it always returns to 
it and confirms it. We have yet to learn that 
scientific research, in tracing back the pedigree 
of races, and following the currents of migra- 
tion and distribution, has been able to correct 
the statements which are made in this ancient 
record in any respect. 

Furthermore, as the line of this history 
comes down toward modern times, where the 
parallel lines of other history come into exist- 
ence, it is only confirmed more and more as a 
truthful, historic record* In its sphere, as a 
history, there is none so perfect and reliable. 
A strong probability, therefore, is created in 
its favor. If it is proved sterling history in 
different parts, the probability is that it is so in 
the whole. It is positive evidence alone which 
can turn the scale to the contrary. 

Add at this point, now, the fact that the first 
chapter of this book is proved to be inspired, 
what is the probability with regard to the rest ? 
Is it probable that the Holy Spirit would 
authenticate the beginning of a continuous 
book, and not the whole? Or, at least, would 
not a writer, of such character as to be chosen 
for the inspiration of a part of his wprk, be 



78 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

one who would relate only historic truth in the 
remainder ? Does not the direct inspiration of 
the part show a divine authentication of the 
whole? It is most reasonable so to believe. 

II. It has a place in the history of the world, 
aside from sacred Scripture. 

No written, authentic, contemporaneous his- 
tory, as has just been said, in any nation, goes 
back so far. Nevertheless, " the fact of a del- 
uge which once destroyed the whole race, with 
the exception of a few individuals, is one of the 
best proved events in all past history. It is 
sustained by an array of evidence as strong as 
is possible in regard to an event which lies so 
far back of all written memorials — more im- 
pressive, indeed, than mere documents could 
furnish. It has been branded into the memory 
of the nations, and has come down from time 
immemorial, in all parts of the globe." * Go 
wherever you will, over all the earth, among 
whatever nations, and you find, in some form, 
traces of this event in legend, or tradition, or 
in monumental history. The student of the 
ancient languages finds it among the myths and 
legends of early Greek and Roman history. 
Oriental scholars and travellers have found it 
everywhere among the Asiatic nations, from 

* Processor Bartlett, Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1863. 



. THE NOACIIIAN DELUGE. 79 

the Red Sea through Persia, India, China, and 
northerly to the Frozen Ocean. Humboldt found 
it among the Orinoco Indians, the primitive 
Brazilians, and Peruvians. It also existed 
among the Islanders of the South Seas, and the 
Indians of Terra Firma and North America. 
Its record exists on the rudely sculptured mon- 
uments of a lost race in Mexico, and in the 
sacred book of the Parsees and the Scandina- 
vian Edda. Hamilton Smith, an English writer 
upon the natural history of man, says that 
" diluvian records abound with all the Cauca- 
sian and cognate races." There are probably, 
he says, more than one hundred fabulous 
legends, religious and mythical, where the 
patriarch and his family are designated under 
different names, circumstances, and localities. 

I will relate, as examples, two or three of 
these traditions. 

Humboldt, among the Orinoco Indians, found 
it in the following form : " The belief in a 
great deluge," he says, "is not confined to one 
nation singly — the Tamanacs : it makes part 
of a system of historical tradition, of which we 
find scattered notions among the Maypures of 
the great cataracts ; among the Indians of the 
liio Erevato, which runs into the Caura ; and 
among almost all the tribes of the Upper Ori- 
noco. When the Tamanacs are asked how the 



80 EVENINGS WITH TEE BIBLE. 

human race survived this great deluge, — the 
age of water of the Mexicans, — they say, a 
man and woman saved themselves on a high 
mountain called Tamanacu, situated on the 
banks of the Asiveru, and casting behind them 
over their heads the fruits of the Mauritia palm- 
tree, they saw the seeds contained in these 
fruits produce men and women, who repeopled 
the earth." Humboldt remarks here the like- 
ness which all, who have read Grecian mythol- 
ogy, must observe between this and the Grecian 
story. He says, " Thus we find in all simplicity, 
among nations in a savage state, a tradition 
which the Greeks embellished with all the 
charms of the imagination." The Grecian story 
was this : The world being very wicked, was 
doomed by the gods to destruction. For this 
purpose there was a mighty eruption of water 
from the earth, attended with heavy showers 
from above. Deucalion aud his wife alone were 
preserved, and that on account of their piety. 
They were saved in a great ark, which Deucalion 
had built. There followed him into this ark 
animals of every species, by pairs, — boars, 
lions, horses, serpents, — whatever lived upon 
the face of the earth ; " all of which he received 
into the ark, and experienced no evil from 
them." This is Lucian's account. Plutarch 
adds, that " Deucalion, as his voyage was draw- 



THE NOACHIAN DELUGE. 81 

ing to a close, sent out a dove, which coming in 
a short time back to him, indicated that the 
waters still covered the earth ; but which, on a 
second occasion, failed to return, or, as some 
say, returned to him with mud-stained feet, 
and thus indicated the abatement of the flood." 
The end of the story is, that Deucalion and his 
wife, after going forth from the ark, consulted 
the oracle to learn how the earth was to be re- 
peopled. In accordance with the command of 
the oracle, they threw stones over their heads 
behind them, and those which Deucalion threw 
became men, those which his wife threw, 
women. In this latter part, you perceive, is 
the striking resemblance of the Orinoco tradi- 
tion. 

Among the North American Indians the tra- 
dition is, that "the father of all their tribes 
being warned, in a dream, that the flood was 
coming, built a raft, on which he preserved his 
family, and pairs of all the animals, and which 
drifted about for many months, until at length 
a new earth was made for their reception by 
the mighty man above." In the Scandinavian 
Edda it takes a curious form. " On the death 
of the great giant Ymir, whose flesh and bones 
form the rocks and soils of the earth, and who 
was slain by the early gods, his blood, which 
now constitutes the ocean, rushed so copiously 
6 



82 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

out of his wounds, that all the old race of the 
lesser giants, his offspring, were drowned in 
the flood which it occasioned, save one, and he, 
by escaping on board his bark, with his wife, 
outlived the deluge." The Hindu tradition, as 
brought to light by the researches of Sir Wil- 
liam Jones, is the only one I will add. The 
holy Satyavrata was a maritime prince. One 
day he was visited by the god Vishnu, and 
informed that " in seven days, all creatures 
who had offended him, the god, should be de- 
stroyed by a deluge ; but Satyavrata should 
be preserved in a vessel miraculously formed. 
He was therefore to take all kinds of medicinal 
herbs and esculent grain for food, and together 
with the seven holy men, their wives, and pairs 
of all animals, enter the ark without fear. 
After seven days, during which Satyavrata had 
conformed in all respects to the instructions 
given him, the ocean began to overflow the 
coasts, and the earth to be flooded by constant 
rains, when a large vessel was seen coming, 
floating shore wards on the rising waters, which 
the prince and the seven nishis entered, with 
their wives, all laden with plants and grain, 
and accompanied by the animals." 

Thus we see how the story has its place in 
the early traditional history of every people. 
How can we possibly deny a foundation in fact 



THE NOACHIAN DELUGE. 83 

for such a general tradition? What else can 
possibly be its source ? How else can we ac- 
count for it than by admitting that it took 
place, and supposing that every branch of the 
human family, as it moved away from the cen- 
tre of distribution after the event, bore away 
the remembrance of it, and its history pre- 
served in tradition? To account for an ex- 
isting fact in the historical world, we must 
admit the historical verity of the Noachian 
deluge. And the facts which have been con- 
sidered we regard as establishing the historical 
verity of the deluge beyond question. 

There are yet, however, two objections, or 
difficulties, perhaps, which need to be con- 
sidered. 

First. The geological difficulties. It will 
be said by some that geology yields us no 
proofs of such a deluge, — that the general 
regularity of geological changes conflicts with 
the idea of such a sudden and ruinous catas- 
trophe. An old objection, under this head, 
used to be, that it was impossible that all the 
mountains of the earth should be covered so 
that the highest peak should be fifteen cubits, 
or twenty-two and one "half feet, under water. 
There was no way conceivable in which all the 
water of the oceans even could be made to do 
it. But when this objection was urged, the 



84 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

fact of geology, that all the land surface of the 
globe is subject to elevations and depressions* 
from internal force, had not become familiar, 
if at all known. Geology and revelation con- 
cur in making the land surface once wholly 
under water. When the fiat went forth, " Let 
dry land appear," the continents and islands 
slowly upheaved from their watery bed, and 
for the first time diversified the surface of the 
globe with mountain, hill, and valley. Evi- 
dently, if the Maker of the earth saw fit to 
cause the waters to prevail again, as at first, 
he could easily do so. It is but to let the con- 
tinents and islands sink to their pristine place. 
Or, let what are now the ocean beds be but 
partially elevated, and the continents would 
consequently sink, and the ocean waters regain 
possession of the whole surface. 

This objection, too, was made against a uni- 
versal deluge. It could not be raised against 
a limited one — such as we have seen the 
necessities, only, of the case demand. The 
other geological difficulties are really no diffi- 
culties. Let it be admitted that geology 
affords no proofs of a deluge as }^et. That is 
not decisive evidence "to the contrary. No 
traces, possibly, were left which could be rec- 
ognized. Perhaps it would be impossible to 
distinguish them from the marks of other dilu- 



THE NOAOHIAN DELUGE. 85 

vial action. Put the spade or the pick into the 
ground any where, — dig but a well or a reser- 
voir ? — and you have diluvial marks in abun- 
dance. How can you assign to them their 
particular and respective causes? You can 
sometimes say that there have been two or 
three different actions of water, and perhaps at 
separate times ; but you cannot say that any 
one of them had any thing to do with the del- 
uge, or that it had not. There are certainly 
marks of a great diluvial catastrophe, which 
occurred since the earth was abundantly inhab- 
ited both by man and animals, in the caves and 
ancient river beds of Europe, as we have seen 
in the lecture upon the Antiquity of the Kace. 
But whether there are traces of the Noachian 
deluge or not, it is impossible to say. 

As to the assertion that the general reg- 
ularity of geologic changes conflicts with the 
idea of such a catastrophe, it is sufficient to 
say that it is founded upon a limited geological 
acquaintance. It is not the fact. The testi- 
mony of geology is, that the elevation of the 
continents above the oceans was a uniform 
upward motion to a certain point, and there 
remaining fixed. It was an oscillating motion. 
Parts rose and sank again. A region once 
elevated would subside. Perhaps it would 
remain elevated long enough to be covered 



86 EVENINGS WITH TEE BIBLE, 

with vegetation, even large trees. The Isle of 
Portland, England, whence the famous Port- 
land stone comes, shows a series of such eleva- 
tions and subsidences.* The indications from 
geology are, that volcanic disturbances were 
great and widespread in the earlier history of 
the globe, and have only been growing less and 
less in time. The Mosaic deluge may have 
only been the last of importance in the series. 
Hamilton Smith, in his Natural History of 
Mali, already referred to, remarks : "The pres- 
ent superficial character of the earth may be a 
result of the combined action of sudden, vio- 
lent disruptions, and long durations of gradual 
disintegrations. . . . Taking the newer pli- 
ocene, or second tertiary age, to be coincident 
with the mighty changes of sea and shore, 
when volcanic disturbances were still in active 
operation, and that convulsive state which sub- 
sequent catastrophes and the succession of ages 
have as yet only reduced in number and mod- 
erated in force, when first a congenial atmos- 
phere had begun to prevail, we have an epoch 
which would include the Mosaic deluge, and 
terminate with that greatest of all recorded 
destructions ; one, moreover, supported by 
innumerable historical confirmations." (p. 24.) 
In another connection, he remarks, "Whether 

* So the valley of the Mississippi, near Vicksburg. 



THE NO AC HI AN DELUGE. 87 

such an existence (of the race) dates so far 
back as six thousand years, or seven thousand 
three hundred and twenty-two, ... is not a 
question of importance ; since between the 
dates of man's creation and the present, there 
is abundant proof, not only of one general 
diluvian catastrophe, but also of many others, 
more or less important ; and these alone, in a 
great measure, are sufficient cause for the dis- 
persion of man to all the points of the earth 
where he is found to reside, and in many places 
where the marks of his presence evidently date 
back to a very remote period." (p. 112.) The 
testimony is, that whole regions have been 
submerged on the south and east of Asia, par- 
ticularly between the coasts of Malabar and 
Ceylon ; and vast provinces have disappeared 
in the Chinese and Japan seas.* So late as 
within the last twenty years a deluge took 
place in the maritime provinces of the Yellow 
Sea, the waters apparently rising in the Gulf 
of Pechelee, occasioning the destruction of 
several hundred thousand human lives, innu- 
merable cattle, the loss of all the houses and 
provisions, and the total ruin of above sixteen 
millions of the population, who were driven 
to seek shelter and food in the upland prov- 
inces. \ 

* Smith, p. 27. f Ibid., p. 44. 



88 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

The geological aspect of the question is 
therefore in favor instead of against. Indeed, 
according to Hamilton Smith again, a diluvian 
convulsion, evidently occurring during the 
present zoology, passed over Western Asia, 
from south to north, affecting the Arctic coast, 
snapping a portion of the cardinating ridge, 
and causing the surface of the earth to sink 
below the level of any known dry land, ex- 
cepting the basin of the Dead Sea.. Thus the 
Caspian formed an abyss ; the Aral Lake, and 
farther west, perhaps the Black Sea, shared 
the same convulsion.* 

Upon the appearances of this remarkable 
region Hugh Miller formed his theory of the 
Mosaic deluge. It is as follows, gathered from 
his volume entitled, " The Testimony of the 
Rocks ; " and I present it as deserving general 
attention, and, to my own mind, as completely 
satisfactory, in the present state both of biblical 
criticism and £eolo<ncal science. 

Lying north of the Indian Ocean, opening 
south upon the Arabian Sea, and north-west at 
the Gulf of Finland and White Sea, is this 
large region in Europe and Asia ; and, nearly 
equal to all Europe in area, it is a cavity upon 
the surface of the globe. Its rivers — the 
Volga, Oural, Kour, and Amoo are its largest 

* Smith, p. 28. 



THE NOACHIAN DELUGE. 89 

— do not ran outward to the ocean, but in- 
wards, emptying into the inland Caspian and 
Aral seas, or losing themselves, in the eastern 
part of the tract, in the lakes of a rainless dis- 
trict. Many parts of this region are under the 
level of the ocean. The surface of the Caspian 
is eighty-three feet below the Black Sea, and 
some of the great steppes are about thirty feet 
below. This is the same region, you will bear 
in mind, to which Hamilton Smith refers, and 
includes the great recognized centre of the 
human family. Now, how easy it is to see, as 
Hugh Miller points out, that in a volcanic con- 
vulsion a communication might be opened with 
the ocean, either at the Gulf of Finland or at 
the Black Sea, or both, and thus the fountains 
of the great deep be actually broken up. Such 
a convulsion would naturally be accompanied 
with violent storms of rain. Suppose this area 
to have been depressed gradually for forty 
days. That would be at the rate of about four 
hundred feet per diem, a rate not twice greater 
than that at which the tide rises at the Straits 
of Magellan, and which would have rendered 
itself apparent as but a persistent inward 
flowing of the sea. At the end of the fortieth 
day, the centre of this district would be sunk 
sixteen thousand feet, — a depth sufficiently 
profound to bury the loftiest mountains of the 



90 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

district, and yet having a gradient declination 
of but sixteen feet to the mile, the contour of 
its hills and plains would remain apparently 
what they had before been, — the doomed in- 
habitants would see but the water rising along 
the mountain sides, and one refuge after an- 
other swept away, till the last witness of the 
scene would have perished, and the last hilltop 
would have disappeared. 

Thus it might have been. While yet the 
whole race, though some millions in number, 
were contained in that central region, if their 
Creator, for reasons, saw fit to destroy them at 
once in this manner, it could have been done, 
and by means which geologists would not call 
at all miraculous. And it would have been to 
the race, and to the fauna of that region, a 
universal deluge. And there are some evi- 
dences in geology, as we have seen, that there 
was once such a catastrophe. 

The remaining difficulty — and with it I 
conclude — is, the improbability that God 
would do such a thing. It is objected that the 
great and omnipotent God, possessed of the 
dignity of the supreme control and majesty of 
the universe, and being at the same time an 
infinitely merciful and forbearing Father to all 
his creatures, would not be likely to destro}' 
them in this manner, whatever their wicked- 



THE NO AC HI AN DELUGE. 91 

ness. To represent that God sent a flood to 
sweep away men, women, and children, — a 
whole race; and animals, birds, insects, and 
reptiles, — the innocent and helpless with the 
guilty, in wrathful punishment ; and when he, 
with his foreknowledge, must know that as 
soon again as the earth was repeopled from 
those who w T ere spared, just and righteous as 
they might be, it would be filled with like 
heaven-crying iniquity, — is to impeach the 
divine goodness, detract from the dignity of 
divine character, represent God as actuated by 
unworthy motives, and charge him with weak- 
ness and folly. 

I answer, we are little competent to sit in 
judgment upon divine acts. Especially to 
judge thus of the divine hand in the condign 
punishment of the antediluvians by a flood, is 
to judge of an act from a human standpoint, 
at a very great distance in time and in moral 
regard. We do not, we cannot know, so as to 
judge, the reasons which existed, and which 
the divine mind saw. We cannot climb to 
the high point whence God looked upon the 
world and its wants, what it needed then, what 
was right and fitting treatment, and what was 
needed for it with reference to the ages to 
come. There are many things now, which, in 
the best exercise of our ability, we should say 



92 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

God would not be likely to do. We should 
have said that God, being such as he is, would 
not have been likely to make man at all with 
the liability to sin, much more with the cer- 
tainty of becoming what we see the race to-day. 
We should say that God would not have been 
likely to permit wars, and thus for portions of 
the human race to sweep away one another, as 
they so often have, in deluges of blood. We 
should say that he would not be likely to per- 
mit pestilences and plagues, terrible accidents, 
famines, persecutions, the sufferings of pov- 
erty, innocence, and the like. In 1421 a 
great submersion of land occurred in Holland, 
when the waters of the Meuse and Waal sud- 
denly overwhelmed seventy-two villages, and 
one hundred thousand human beings were lost. 
The whole region is now a huge waste of bog, 
overgrown with reeds. God permitted that. 
In 1665 the plague visited the city of London. 
In one week it swept away ten thousand vic- 
tims, and, during its prevalence, more than one 
hundred thousand. The great city, for that 
time, was made a city of terrors. At first the 
inhabitants began to disperse. But soon the 
people of the surrounding country, in self- 
defence, met them in the ways and beat them 
back. All business was stopped. Fires were 
built in the streets, and kept burning, for dis- 



THE NO AC HI AN DELUGE. 93 

infection. Eed crosses were painted on the 
doors of the houses infected, with the words 
above them, "Lord, have mercy on us!" 
People avoided each other in the street, and 
no wheels, for weeks and months, rattled over 
the pavements, save those of the dead-carts, 
which went around by night, once in twenty- 
four hours, accompanied by flaming torches 
and a tinkling bell, to receive the dead. No 
friends were permitted to follow their dead to 
the last resting-place, and no burial service was 
allowed. God permitted that. In his prov- 
idence, he was its efficient worker. Here, two 
or three years ago, a Pemberton Mill fell to 
the ground, overwhelming scores of persons in 
its ruins, and, before a tithe of the half-crushed 
bodies could be extricated, the ruins caught 
lire, and, as if it were not enough to be help- 
lessly crushed and mangled, it was added to 
the agonies of some to be burned to death ! 
A few years ago too, in midwinter, fearfully 
cold, so that all our shore was transformed' 
from rocks and beaches into bowlders, crags, 
and cliffs of ice, in the midst of a blinding 
snow storm, a bark, pursuing her homeward 
voyage, struck on yonder rocks, and in a few 
moments — no eye but God's looking on — 
was ground to pieces, and every soul on board 
was floating, a lifeless corpse, on the sea [ 



94 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

What shall we say of these things — of the 
vast catalogue that we could not name if we 
were to speud a whole lifetime? Should we 
say that God would be likely to permit them ? 
But he does ; and therefore there are wise and 
good reasons, consistent with his justice and 
benevolence. We cannot doubt that, although 
we are not able to comprehend and explain it. 
We cannot, therefore, say that God would not 
be likely to have done what is recorded as an 
act of his judgment upon the ancient world. 
Indeed, we cannot but say with Hugh Miller, 
that the deluge may have been as much an act 
of mercy to the race as of judgment. "Even 
in our own times, as happened in Xew Zealand 
during the present century, and in Tahiti about 
the close of the last, tribes restricted to one 
tract of country, when seized by the madness 
of conquest, have narrowly escaped extermi- 
nation. We know that, in some instances, 
better have been destroved by worse races ; 
that the more rehned have at times yielded to 
the more barbarous, — yielded so entirely, that 
all that survived of vast populations, and a 
comparatively high civilization, have been 
broken temples, and great burial mounds locked 
up in the solitudes of deep forests ; and fur- 
ther, that whole peoples, exhausted by their 
vices, have sunk into such a state of depres- 



THE XOACHIAN DELUGE. 95 

sion and decline, that, unable any longer to 
supply the inevitable waste of nature, they 
have dropped into extinction. And such may 
have been the condition of the human race 
during that period of portentous evil and vio- 
lence which preceded the deluge." 

Our only question is, Is it a fact? And that, 
I think, is abundantly proved by what we have 
seen. And being a fact, we find in the narra- 
tive of it in the Mosaic record only another 
evidence to the truthful and historical character 
of that record. And, from what we have now 
seen with reference to this account and the 
account of the creation, we may well rejoice in 
all the work which science and criticism are 
accomplishing. They will only exhibit more 
and more the foundations of God's word, and 
show that they are set everlastingly in the 
truth. 



96 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 



THE MONUMENTS OF EGYPT, AND THEIR TES- 
TIMONY TO THE TRUTH. 

I propose to speak to-night of that won- 
derful land whose history runs back to a 
period contemporaneous with the earliest his- 
torical notices we have of any land upon the 
globe, and from whose soil sprang the arts of 
civilization of Greece and of Rome ; and of 
its monuments, which to-day have a hoary 
antiquity, in the presence of which Athenian 
Acropolis and Roman Coliseum become things 
of yesterday. Upon the banks of the Xile 
we may behold magnificent piles of architec- 
ture, not yet prostrated by the rude changes of 
war and revolution which have swept over the 
land, nor consumed by the tooth of time, once 
looked upon by Abraham, and seen as familiar 
objects by Joseph and Moses. Those wonders 
of the world, the pyramids of Ghizeh, upon 
the western bank of the river, a little above 
Cairo, date about twenty-three hundred years 



THE MONUMENTS OF EGYPT. 97 

before Christ, or more than four thousand years 
ago, and more than one thousand years before 
the Trojan war; and the splendid ruins of 
Thebes, known as the temples and colonnades 
of Luxor and Karnac, were already ruins, very 
much as they now are, when infant Rome had 
just begun to nourish her giant power upon 
the seven eternal hills. Our own national his- 
tory wears not yet the age of a century upon 
its brow, and our whole history, national and 
colonial, has arrived at an age only a little 
more than two centuries. The history of 
England, from the time of William the Con- 
queror, is just eight hundred years old. But 
the Egypt, the monuments of whose unrivalled 
grandeur bestud the banks of the Nile to-day, 
had existed, and enacted a history of more 
than a thousand years, before even ancient 
Greece had prepared for a single page. 

What her Wealth, and art, and civilization 
were, we may gather from her monuments 
to-day remaining. All the wealth and gran- 
deur of any of the modern nations have not 
erected piles of architecture which, were ruin 
to sweep over those nations to-day, would, a 
hundred years from now, tell a story of the 
tithe of wealth and power those monuments of 
Egypt declare to have existed more than three 
7 



98 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

and four thousand years ago.* The massive- 
ness of architecture tells of mechanical powers 
and instruments, of the use of which we have 
no knowledge or conception. In front of the 
Memnonium — a temple at Thebes — lies pros- 
trate the statue of King Rameses, "the most 
stupendous statue ever reared in the world." 
Originally, it is said to have been seventy-five 
feet high, and twenty-three across the shoul- 
ders. It was hewn from one solid piece of 
granite, weighing upwards of eight hundred 
tons, and transported, by some means unknown 
to modern mechanical art, more than one hun- 
dred miles from the quarry. 

We might be inclined to think that the art 
of Egypt was rude. Perhaps, upon a slight 
acquaintance, we should characterize it as hav- 
ing the massiveness of grandeur, but lacking the 
grace of beauty. But travellers tell us that, 
" Rude, stiff, and even grotesque as many of the 

* " As I gazed upon these ruins (Karnac and Luxor) of 
forty centuries, and imagined the Thebes that then was, New 
York dwindled into an infant in the lap of a giant. Yes, 
proud upstart of this nineteenth century, the so-called Empire 
City, commercial emporium of the West, great metropolis of 
the New World, if thy rivers should sweep over thee and bury 
thee a while, not all the stone of the Croton Reservoir, and the 
City Hall, and the Astor House, and of a hundred churches, 
forsooth, would make one pile like Karnac ; nor could any of 
these furnish a single stone for the lintels of its gates." — /. P. 
Thompson, D. D., Egypt, Past and Present, p. 149. 



THE MONUMENTS OF EGYPT. 99 

old Eg} r ptian monuments appear, because of 
the religious and conventional forms to which 
the artists were obliged to adhere, there are 
yet traces of the grand and the beautiful, of a 
chaste and severe simplicity, and of a refined 
and delicate taste worthy of the aesthetic 
atmosphere of Greece. 'The vases of the 
Egyptians frequently bear so strong a resem- 
blance to those of Greece, that we might feel 
disposed to consider them borrowed from 
Greek models, did not their known antiquity 
forbid such a conclusion ; and many have mis- 
taken the ornamental devices attached to them, 
and to other fancy works of Egyptian art, for 
the productions of Greek sculptors,' " * Greek 
artists, we are told, went to Egypt to study, as 
modern artists now go to Italy ; and in the 
same way, those who afterwards became the 
famous poets, historians, and philosophers of 
Greece, went to Egypt for travel and study, 
some of them residing for years in the univer- 
sities under the care of the priests, just as 
many now go from us to travel and study in 
Europe. 

This is the Egypt whose fate it has been to 
wait till the nineteenth century of the Christian 
era to find interpreters and readers of her own 
recorded history. 

* Dr. Thompson, p. 26G. 



100 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

The monuments of Egypt have been a won- 
der of the world, not only as magnificent 
remains of departed grandeur, but because 
they have borne upon their sides and in their 
recesses the evident signs of an historical or 
other record. There were carved pictures, and 
ever-recurring forms of animals, birds, instru- 
ments, and material things, in such relation as 
to convince every observer that they were the 
forms of a sign language. Indeed, from no- 
tices in the Greek historians, they were known 
to be such, and were called hieroglyphics — 
sacred sculpture-writing. And thus for ages 
the civilized world have been gazing upon a 
written record, upon the sides of those obelisks, 
pillars, and temple walls, knowing it to be 
such, but unable to read a single word or in- 
terpret a single sign. The hieroglyphic tongue 
was veritably a dead language. 

But it was ordained that, in the closing year 
of the last century, the clew should be found 
which should lead to the interpretation of the 
signs, and confer the power to read the lan- 
guage, and thus make those dead, unmeanino: 
inscriptions living and speaking words. In 
that year Egypt was a theatre of contest 
between England and Erance. The French 
troops were occupying Alexandria. An officer 
of artillery, superintending the repair of an 



THE MONUMENTS OF EGYPT. 101 

earthwork at Fort St. Julien, on the Rosetta 
branch of the Nile; discovered a block of black 
sienite, bearing upon its face an inscription in 
three languages, the Greek, the demotic, or 
common language of Egypt, and the ancient 
hieroglyphic. The Greek inscription was 
found to relate to the coronation of Ptolemy 
Epiphanes, in the second century before Christ, 
and the value of the stone, as possibly fur- 
nishing a clew to the interpretation of the 
hieroglyphics, was at once perceived by the 
French savans who accompanied Xapoleon in 
that expedition. The success of the English 
threw the stone into their hands, and it is now 
in the British Museum at London ; but its 
discovery is due to the French, and also the 
deciphering of the other inscriptions. 

This process was very curious — I may say 
wonderful. It was assumed, in the first place, 
that the hieroglyphic inscription was a repeti- 
tion of the other two. It was then noticed that 
a hieroglyph, called a cartouch — an oblong 
enclosure, containing certain figures, being to 
its owner, perhaps, what an escutcheon was in 
heraldry — occurred in the hieroglyphic in- 
scription as often as the name Ptolemy occurred 
in the Greek. It was assumed, therefore, to 
be his name in hieroglyphs. In the same way 
the name of Cleopatra was deciphered on an 



102 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

obelisk brought from Phike. These two 

names contain several of the same letters 

P., T., O., and E. Observing the hieroglyphic 
characters which appeared to have the powers 
of these letters, the nucleus of an alphabet was 
obtained, and the process of investigation being 
carried on, additions fast accrued, and the abil- 
ity was acquired of reading, with considerable 
certainty, records which have been locked up 
in silence for more than thirty centuries. 

We are not to suppose that perfect accuracy- 
has been yet attained. On the other hand, 
each year is making its additions to the science 
of reading these stony pages of history. And, 
it may be added, each year likewise confirms 
the truth of the discovery. The same method 
was afterwards applied to the inscriptions dis- 
covered by Layard at Xineveh with success ; 
and in the same way, records made by Neb- 
uchadnezzar six hundred years before Christ 
have been read in this nineteenth century after 
Christ. 

Every one must perceive at a glance the 
bearing which these records would be likely to 
have upon the Bible. TTe look at once for 
confirmations or contradictions. The Bible has 
much to do with ancient Egyptian history. 
The ancient people to whom it was given, and 
whose history it is, as a peculiar people of 



THE MONUMENTS OF EGYPT. 103 

God, had much to do with Egypt. They were 
dwellers there for a period at least of two hun- 
dred and fifteen years, and a part of that time 
as slaves. They are represented as delivered 
from their slavery in a wonderful manner, and 
their exodus from the land is represented to 
have taken place at about a certain date in the 
reign of a certain king. Their leader, too, the 
historian of their early career and the com- 
piler of their earliest records, was asserted to 
have been reared at the Egyptian court, and t& 
have left its society, rank, luxury, and pros- 
pects of ease, influence, and power, for the sake 
of his own oppressed and down-trodden people. 
We are led to expect among them, therefore, 
traces of Egyptian habits, manners, and cus- 
toms — some of the relics of Egyptian resi- 
dence and life ; and, in the hieroglyphic records, 
either confirmations or contradictions of these 
accounts in the Hebrew history. 

The first point of bearing, then, in these 
discoveries, is upon the question of chronology. 

The French savans, being of the Voltairean 
school, were ready to seize at once upon any 
and every thing which would aid in breaking 
down the authority of the Bible, and loudly 
proclaim it. Accordingly, to every ancient 
remain they were inclined to attribute a very 
great antiquity. They were disposed to see 



104 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

everywhere inconsistencies with the Bible, and 
marks of contradiction to it. In the last lec- 
ture, I alluded to the temple of Denderah. 
Denderah is a little village far up the Nile, 
nearly up to Thebes. Its temple is a well- 
preserved edifice, and a fine specimen of Egyp- 
tian architecture. Before the interpretation of 
the hieroglyphics was discovered, the astronom- 
ical figures- — in particular, a zodiac — painted 
upon its ceiling, were thought to indicate a 
tery great antiquity. The zodiac represented 
a position of the equinoctial points, which, by 
the law of the precession of the equinoxes, 
could only have existed tens of thousands of 
years ago. Immediately the savans raised a 
shout of triumph. "Where, now, is the 
Bible?" they asked. "Your pretended in- 
spired book makes the world but about six 
thousand years old ; and here we have ocular 
demonstration that it is at least five times as 
old ! Here is an ancient ruin, which was built 
thousands of years before the world was cre- 
ated, according to the Bible." But their jubi- 
lation proved of short continuance. When 
the hieroglyphs were interpreted, it was found 
that the temple belonged to the age of the 
Roman Caesars, the names of Trajan and D&- 
mitian being inscribed at the entrance, and the 
cartouches of Cleopatra and Gesarion, her son 



THE MONUMENTS OF EGYPT. 105 

by Julius Caesar, occurring in profusion upon 
the interior ! 

The argument against the Bible would not 
have been conclusive if the discovery of the 
true date of the temple had not been made. 
It would have remained to be proved that the 
painting was genuine — made at the time it 
represented, and not a fiction of a people 
who, like the Chinese, loved to magnify their 
antiquity. 

But it is still maintained by distinguished 
Egyptologists that the discoveries in Egypt are 
evidence and proof of a much greater antiquity 
than the received chronology, derived from the 
Bible, will allow. Chevalier Bunsen, the dis- 
tinguished author of "Egypt's Place in Uni- 
versal History," makes the date of the earliest 
Egyptian king three thousand six hundred and 
forty-three years before Christ. Lepsius, an- 
other distinguished Egyptologist, makes it 
three thousand eight hundred and ninety-three 
years before Christ. Our common chronology 
makes the deluge but two thousand three hun- 
dred and forty-eight years before Christ, so 
that there is here, at least, a discrepancy of 
thirteen hundred or fifteen hundred years. 
The Egyptologists do not make these dates so 
ancient because they find any certain record 
upon the monuments. The case is this. 



106 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

Manetho is a name familiar to students of an- 
cient history as that of an accredited historian 
of Egypt. He was an Egyptian priest, living 
about three hundred years before Christ. His 
own work is lost, and the only access modern 
scholars have to it is through extracts preserved 
in other ancient writers. By this writer, a 
period of three thousand five hundred and 
fifty- five years was given to the succession of 
Egyptian kings. As this was so discrepant 
with the received authorities, and moreover 
was coupled with a fabulous chronology of the 
reigns of gods, demigods, and heroes for about 
twenty-five thousand years previous to the 
kings, his authority heretofore has been con- 
sidered of little value. The discoveries upon 
the monuments, however, have revealed lists 
of kings which correspond with the lists given 
by Manetho. This has, of course, conferred 
upon him a degree of credibility. Bunsen and 
Lepsius have at once accepted him as of full 
authority, and adopting his number — three 
thousand five hundred and fifty-five years — 
for the duration of the dynasties from Menes, 
the first recorded king, have fixed their re- 
spective dates. Bunsen and Lepsius differ, as 
has been seen, in the date which they affix to 
the commencement of the Egyptian dynasties, 
although they adopted the same number from 



THE MONUMENTS OF EGYPT. 107 

Manetho. It is because they set the close of 
that number at different points. 

What is to be said in this state of the case ? 
The monuments have brought a new authority 
into the field. Shall we forsake our old stan- 
dard, and join ourselves at once to the new? 
Let us allow Manetho his place as a historian, 
to be ranked with Herodotus, Livy, and other 
ancient historians, as, on the whole, a trust- 
worthy authority. Does it close the question, 
and decide it for us beyond need of further 
investigation? Certainly not. We have but 
very little of Manetho, and do not know the 
grounds upon which he based his representa- 
tions. He may have been correct in his lists 
of the kings, but incorrect in assigning the 
length of their reigns. Indeed, other Egypt- 
ologists are decided that his chronology is 
not to be received, and tell us that their re- 
searches have revealed the fact that some of 
these reigns, which Manetho makes continuous- 
ly successive, were contemporaneous. For ex- 
ample, during the sway of the second dynasty, 
there were in different parts of Egypt four 
other dynasties holding ride at the same time. 
Both Bunsen and Lepsius admit that some of 
the dynasties must have been contemporaneous. 

By means of this discovery, these other 
Egyptologists have brought the date of Menes, 



108 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

the first king, about one thousand years nearer 
— to two thousand seven hundred and seven- 
teen years before Christ. I refer to the labors 
of Messrs. Lane and Stuart Poole of England. 
A strong confirmation of this discovery is 
found in the fact, according to Mr. Poole, that 
it harmonizes with all the ancient Egyptian 
divisions of time, and seems to be verified by 
the consistency of its component parts. It is 
said that "he (Poole) harmonizes the lists of 
Manetho and the tablets (on the monuments), 
and reads intelligently the records of the first 
seventeen dynasties, that have hitherto given 
so much perplexity. His system tallies with 
itself and with the monuments, and synchro- 
nizes with all known data of Egyptian history. 
His readings are accepted hy Sir Gardner Wil- 
kinson (another authority, and earlier in the 
field than either Bunsen or Lepsius), and his 
astronomical cycles are confirmed by the calcu- 
lations of Mr. Airy, the astronomer royal at 
Greenwich."* 

It is evident, then, that the reading of the 
hieroglyphics, and the discovery of Manetho's 
correctness in his lists, was not a finality of the 
chronological question. And it is possible that 
even now there are discoveries yet to be made 
which shall throw additional light. But the 

* Egypt, Past and Present, p. 173. 



THE MONUMENTS OF EGYPT. 109 

argument in favor of this view is so strong, as 
to seem to me quite conclusive. 

You will perceive, however, that there is 
still a considerable discrepancy between this 
result and the demands of the biblical chronol- 
ogy, as commonly received, which makes the 
deluge to date but two thousand three hundred 
and forty-eight years before Christ. The 
Egyptian dynasties cannot date, of course, 
beyond the flood. They must commence some 
time this side. Time must be given for the 
descendants of Noah to increase, and to have 
dispersed somewhat. What shall we say here ? 

I reply, that no real difficulty is presented. 
A fixed and definite chronology, without gaps, 
is not given in the Bible previous to the time of 
Solomon. Genealogies are given with ages, 
and reigns with dates, but not without intervals 
of unknown duration, though indeed they can- 
not have been very long. The chronology of 
our Bibles, the dates of which are placed along 
the tops of the pages, is an estimated chronol- 
ogy. For the time beyond Solomon, it is the 
opinion of men. And the received chronology 
of our common English Bibles is only one 
estimate, among several, of worthy English 
scholars. The following paragraph, from the 
article on chronology in the Encyclopaedia 
Britannica, illustrates the real state of the case. 



110 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

"According to the Samaritan text" (of the 
Old Testament), it says, "the dispersion took 
place about four hundred years after the deluge. 
. . . For this period, the intervals of time 
between the principal events recorded in Scrip- 
ture are seldom mentioned in the same cir- 
cumstantial manner ; and the chronologers who 
computed the succession of years had not only 
to contend with the discordant readings, but 
were often obliged to assign arbitrary values to 
the generations, or other vague terms by which 
the time is computed. From computations 
founded on such loose and uncertain data, it 
would be in vain to look for agreement : ac- 
cordingly, the results not only present great 
discrepancies, but appear to be as numerous as 
the computations. Desvignoles, in the preface 
to his Chronology of Sacred History, asserts 
that he has collected upwards of two hundred 
different calculations, the shortest of which 
reckons only three thousand four hundred and 
eighty-three years between the creation of the 
world and the commencement of the vulgar 
era, and the longest six thousand nine hun- 
dred **and eighty-four. The difference amounts 
to thirty-five centuries. . . . All that can be 
gathered from these conflicting statements 
amounts to this, that the true epoch of the crea- 
tion of the world is utterly unknown. British 



THE MONUMENTS OF EGYPT. Ill 

chronologers in general prefer the computation 
of Archbishop Usher, who places the creation 
of the world, or rather of &dam, four thousand 
and four years before the vulgar era." 

Such is the real state of the case. If any 
one wishes to test it, let him take his Bible 
and attempt to make a chronology from the 
time of the flood to the time of King Solomon. 

You hence see two things. First, that the 
opinion which has become commonly prevalent 
among Christians, that the chronology indicated 
by the dates in our English Bibles is the chro- 
nology of inspiration, is incorrect. It is only 
a computed chronology, — that of Archbishop 
Usher, — and commonly received because here- 
tofore thought by scholars to be supported by 
the best evidence. Second, that therefore any 
theory, or opinion, or so-thought result of re- 
search, inconsistent with this chronology, is 
not necessarily an attack upon inspiration. 

Bunsen makes the date of the first recorded 
Egyptian king three thousand six hundred and 
forty-three years before Christ. Lepsius makes 
it three thousand eight hundred and ninety- 
three ; thereby pushing back the date of Adam 
at least thirteen hundred or fifteen hundred 
years farther than our common chronology 
makes it. But I do not consider these men in 
this at all impinging upon the divine authority 



112 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

and authenticity of the Bible. Chevalier Bun- 
sen was a very reverent Christian man, and 
would have been the last to weaken, in the 
smallest degree, the foundations of the Bible 
as the word of God. My only objection to his 
view, and the criticism I make upon it, is, that 
he does not make me see that he has adopted 
it upon sufficient grounds. I think his reasons 
too hastily assumed, and shown to be too has- 
tily assumed by the work of Messrs. Lane and 
Poole. And, vice versa, I am made to receive 
Mr. Poole's result as nearly, if not precisely, 
the truth — as nearly, perhaps, as we shall 
ever be able to attain. 

The second point of bearing the discoveries 
in Egypt have upon the biblical record, relates 
to its character as a narrative of historical 
events. 

1. And the first remark I have to make here 
is, that nothing has been found to contradict or 
throw doubt upon the Scripture record. Weigh 
this fact, for it is an important one. It estab- 
lishes the fact that the Old Testament Scrip- 
tures, so far, are not the forgeries of an after 
time by any one living out of Egypt. It is 
inconceivable that any one, not being what the 
writer of the Pentateuch professed himself to 
be, an Egyptian born, bred at court, and 
familiar with the country, and with all the 



THE MONUMENTS OF EGYPT. 113 

habits and customs of the people, could have 
written the Five Books of Moses, so called, 
which describe so much intimately related to 
Egypt, without falling into inconsistency and 
contradiction, and having the history of Egypt, 
when it should be read from the monuments, 
as it is to-day, reveal the fact. If those books 
were a forgery, the voices of those so long 
silent stones would to-day declare it. More- 
over, if the discoveries have produced nothing 
to throw doubt upon the books of Moses, then 
in that fact they confer high probability upon 
their record. It was certainly to have been 
expected, that if the Books of Moses were not 
a true and faithful account, the reading of the 
parallel history of Egypt from the monuments 
would have revealed it. Since, however, they 
do not, — nor do they assert any thing contra- 
dictory to any part of Scripture, — they 
become so far silent witnesses in favor of 
Scripture. 

But there is much that positively confirms. 
I hold in my hand a volume by one of those 
plodding, indefatigable German authors, — -a 
book I must candidly confess I have never con- 
tinuously read. It is entitled, "Egypt and 
the Books of Moses." The design of the au- 
thor, Hengstenberg, professor of theology at 
Berlin, taking up the results of Egyptian re- 
8 



114 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

search, is to trace minutely and exhaustively 
the confirmation which that research contributes 
to the authenticity and historical verity of the 
Pentateuch. Its first is a negative part, in 
which is shown from the monuments the cor- 
rectness of all the allusions in the Pentateuch 
to the material used for building in ancient 
Egypt ; the animals employed and known ; the 
use of animal food, which was peculiar ; the 
use of iron ; the cultivation of the vine ; the 
winds ; and the origin of civilization in Egypt. 
Then follows a positive part, in which, chapter 
after chapter, the history of Joseph is con- 
firmed, and the narrative of the exodus, and 
so on. So full and voluminous is this species 
of evidence from the monuments. 

But as a specimen of this evidence, I will 
quote rather an example from Dr. Thompson, 
in the volume already referred to, which was 
published soon after his return from a tour in 
Egypt in 1852. He says, "The incidental 
confirmations of the Bible from the tombs of 
Egypt are numerous and striking. . . . The 
Bible alludes to Egypt ... in terms that in- 
dicate in that country a high state of wealth, 
power, and civilization in the time of Joseph. 
. . . All these allusions are confirmed by co- 
eval monuments, showing that the writer of 
the Pentateuch must have been in Egypt, and 



THE MONUMENTS OF EGYPT 115 

that he wrote of it as a familiar country. For 
example : 

Joseph was bought as a slave. 

Slaves are depicted on the oldest monuments. 

Joseph was exalted to be a steward. 

The steward, with his books, is represented 
on the tombs of every great household. 

Joseph used a cup in divining. 

Divining with a cup is pictured on the tombs. 

Pharaoh dreamed of kine from the river. 

The cow and the river are symbols of plenty. 

Pharaoh gave Joseph a gold chain upon his 
neck. 

This ornament is seen in the pictures of 
princes, and gold ornaments of ancient Egyp- 
tian manufacture are to be seen in Abbot's 
Museum.* 

Joseph built storehouses for grain. 

Pictures of granaries are found in coeval 
tombs. 

Joseph's brethren sat at meat. 

In the pictures of feasts in the tombs, the 
guests are seen sitting instead of reclining. 

The Israelites made bricks with straw. 

Chopped straw is found in ancient bricks. 

The Israelites were pursued with chariots. 

Every battle scene abounds in chariots of 
war." (pp. 204, 5.) 

* In New York city. 



116 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

But I will quote a more striking confirmation 
of sacred history from Dr. Thompson (p. 184) : 
" The most direct and remarkable confirmation 
of the Scriptures," he says, "is found in the 
monumental history of Sesonchis, or Shishak, 
which is sculptured on the outer wall of the 
grand hall of Karnac. We read, in the twelfth 
chapter of the second book of Chronicles, that 
'in the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak, 
King of Egypt, came up against Jerusalem, 
because they had transgressed against the 
Lord, with twelve hundred chariots, and sixty 
thousand horsemen, and the people were 
without number that came with him out of 
Egypt ; and lie took the fenced cities which per- 
tained to Judah, and came to Jerusalem. . . . 
So Shishak, king of Egypt, came up against 
Jerusalem, and took away the treasures of the 
king's house.' Noav, among the sculptures on 
the walls of the temple of Karnac, are some 
pertaining to the reign of Sheshonk I., which 
represent the captives taken by Sheshonk in 
his expedition against Jerusalem, and also 'the 
names of the captive towns and districts' taken 
in the same expedition. Among these names 
Champollion deciphered that of the ' kingdom 
of Judah,' and also such familiar names as 
Taanach, Bethshan, Lehi, Megiddo, Hebron, all 
cities of Palestine ; and also the valley of Ilin- 



THE MONUMENTS OF EGYPT. 117 

nom, and the great place, or Jerusalem. And 
here — what every one may read — are Jewish 
captives, their physiognomy as marked in the 
sculpture as that of any tenant of the Jews' 
quarter in Frankfort-on-the-Main, or of Chat- 
ham Street, in New York, their hands bound 
together, their ears nailed to the executioner's 
pillar, their eyes uplifted in agony and terror 
as the sword is about to descend upon their 
heads. We need no Hebrew chronicle to tell 
us that this Egyptian monarch, who here immo- 
lates Jewish captives before his divinity, has 
returned, flushed with victory and spoil, from 
the land of Judah." (pp. 184, 5.) 

The discoveries in Egypt have testified, 
finally, to the truth of Scripture in another 
way, viz., in the complete fulfilment of proph- 
ecy which they have revealed. In the proph- 
ecy of Jeremiah (xlvi. 19), which w T as uttered 
nearly six hundred years before Christ, it is 
declared that " Noph shall be waste and des- 
olate, without an inhabitant. Egypt is like a 
very fair heifer, but destruction cometh ; it 
cometh out of the north." Noph was Mem- 
phis, the splendid capital of Lower Egypt. 
It was to Lower Egypt what Thebes was 
to Upper Egypt its rival, perhaps, in mag- 
nificence of architecture, and more than its 
rival in magnitude. From the north came, 



118 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

one after the other, the Persian, the Greek, 
the Roman, the Saracen, and the Turk ; and 
to-day the traveller, sitting upon the pyr- 
amids, and looking down upon its site, "sees 
only some rude outline of its form in now 
shapeless masses of stone." Some fragments 
of two or three mutilated statues now adorn 
the British Museum, and some of its stones 
may be detected in the buildings of modern 
Cairo near by, but all else has been swept 
away, or covered deep with desert sand. One 
hundred years ago its site was completely 
unknown, but God has permitted the hand of 
modern research to bring to light just enough 
of its remains to show how sure and unfailing 
is his word — that heaven and earth shall pass 
away, but not one jot or one tittle shall pass 
from his word till all be fulfilled. 

In the thirtieth chapter of Ezekiel, a proph- 
ecy uttered about five hundred and seventy-live 
years before Christ, occurs, among other pre- 
dictions hurled against Egypt, the following : 
" I will execute judgments in No. I will cut 
off the multitude of Xo. I will set fire in 
Egypt ; Sin (Pelusium) shall have great pain, 
and No shall be rent asunder." Xo was Thebes 
— the hundred-gated Thebes of Homer. Its 
magnificent remains are known to-day as Luxor 
and El Karnac. First came the Assyrian, 



THE MONUMENTS OF EGYPT. 119 

under Nebuchadnezzar, young and brilliant, — 
the Napoleon of his clay. Then the Persian 
Cambyses, who exerted himself to the utmost 
to level its massive grandeur with the dust. 
Lastly, Ptolemy Lathrus, king of Lower Egypt, 
eighty-two years before Christ, to subdue a 
revolt, laid his hand so destructively upon it, 
that, about one hundred years later, the Gre- 
cian geographer, Strabo, describes the place as 
in his time occupied by a few villages of poor, 
miserable people ; and it has continued the 
same to this day. For nineteen hundred years 
those broken and time-worn monuments have 
stood, and for centuries more they will stand, 
in melancholy testimony of the truth of God's 
word, and the severity of his judgment against 
those who utterly forsake him, despising and 
trampling upon the heaven-high privileges and 
conditions of prosperity bestowed upon them. 
So it is, indeed, in the whole land of the 
Nile. Dr. Thompson, bidding adieu to Egypt, 
says, "The first view of the pyramids im- 
pressed me with their grandeur, as the mon- 
uments of kings ; the parting view filled me 
with awe of their solemn majesty, as monu- 
ments of departed empires. The kings that 
built them prepared a tombstone for Egypt 
against her burial. Since I first saw them from 
the Delta, I had traversed, for five hundred 



120 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

miles, the valley of the Upper Nile, and had 
found it filled with buried cities ; I had seen 
Thebes a ruin, and now saw the utter desola- 
tion of Xoph and On. The whole Xile valley 
is a sepulchre, where Egypt is buried, and 
these are the monuments that mark the en- 
trance to the tomb." 

"The whole Xile valley is a sepulchre, 
where Egypt is buried ! " And that in ful- 
filment of inspired prophecy ! So Egypt, in 
every part, my friends, is a monument to God's 
truth ! Her long-locked and silent history is 
only opened by research and discovery, at this 
late day, to confirm God's word ; and for the 
same end are her ruins dug from the sand and 
dust. God has preserved this testimony, to 
bring it forth in this the nineteenth century 
after Christ, when new attacks from so many 
quarters have combined to undermine and 
overthrow his word. Men have undertaken in 
these days, as though it were a new thought 
and a conclusive argument, to throw the suspi- 
cion of a mythology upon the ancient books of 
the Bible. They pretend to be able to point 
out the certain evidences of mythic character ; 
show from what the miracles, as stories, may 
and must have arisen ; what things are impos- 
sible as historic truth, and what things are 
inconsistent with the supposition that the books 



THE MONUMENTS OF EGYPT. 121 

of Moses were written when, where, and by 
whom they profess to have been written. And 
now, as if to meet precisely this form of infi- 
delity, God in his providence causes the cleAv 
to the hitherto mute monuments to be found, 
and they at once speak. They have no words 
to utter inconsistent with, or contradictory to, 
the written record ; on the other hand, they 
have much to say in confirmation ; and the 
sceptics are again put to shame. 



122 EVENING S WITS THE BIBLE. 



COLENSO, AND HIS ASSAULTS UPON THE 
PENTATEUCH. 

The later assaults of Rationalism upon Scrip- 
ture have been directed against its credibility, 
and therefore against its inspiration. It is not 
charged that any of the books, either of the 
Old Testament or of the New, are forgeries. 
It is not denied, in general, that they are the 
genuine, honest productions of their authors ; 
that they hold their place honestly and truth- 
fully in the canon of ancient Jewish history 
and record, and the history and record of the 
Christian church. The books of Moses, it is 
admitted, are genuine. So the book of Esther, 
Nehemiah, and all the books of the Old Testa- 
ment ; and the Gospels, the book of Acts, and 
the Epistles (excepting the epistle to the He- 
brews) of the New Testament, pass now with- 
out challenge of fraud or dishonesty. So much 
have Christian apologetics attained for the 
Bible. But the point of attack, where the 
enemies of inspiration now concentrate their 
charges, hoping to carry it by storm, is the 



COLENSO UPON THE PENTATEUCH. 123 

historic and general credibility of different 
books. Strauss, De Wette, and latest, Kenan, 
assail the Gospels. With these men, Matthew, 
Mark, Luke, and John are honest enough, sin- 
cere, and conscientious. But were they capa- 
ble ? Were they other than ignorant, illiterate 
fishermen? Were they able to rise above the 
peculiar views and superstitions of their nation 
and their times? Were they not the dupes, 
innocently and necessarily, of their own unen- 
lightened times, and of an enthusiasm for a 
truly great and remarkable man? They are 
honest enough in relating certain events as 
miracles, but are we to believe that they truly 
were miracles, or that these honest men were 
helped to their belief by their imaginations, 
and by the credulity and superstition of the 
times? And the result of this "modern crit- 
icism" is, that Jesus Christ, whose historical 
character is not called in question, becomes 
only a somewhat remarkable man, — a man of 
remarkable insight and comprehension, of won- 
derful purity of purpose and great benevolence, 
— a man at once of singular philosophic spirit 
and magnificent philanthropy. This is all. 

The same criticism, turned to the Old Testa- 
ment, discovers legend and tradition, and seeks 
to eliminate them, and leave a residue, if there 
be one, of pure historic character. In its view, 



124 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

the • narratives of the Creation, of the Fall, 
the Deluge, the confusion of tongues, are all 
traditions. Much of the story of Genesis is 
myth. We are therefore to receive the earlier 
books of the Old Testament as we receive the 
early history of other nations, — of Greece, 
Kome, Egypt, China, — cum grano salts — with 
a very large grain of salt. In fact, we are to 
receive them, on the whole, as unhistorical. 

Thus the gate is opened, and the flood tide 
is let in to sweep away the foundations, super- 
structure, and all, of that glorious edifice of 
truth and love which our God has builded for 
us in his word. 

Of this latter class is the Right Reverend 
John William Colenso, Bishop of Natal, South 
Africa, of whom, and his assaults upon the 
books of Moses, I am to speak to you to-night. 

Bishop Colenso received his appointment 
from the Church of England, and was sent out 
as missionary bishop to South Africa about ten 
years ago. It seems that his views had become 
somewhat unsettled and sceptical before his 
appointment, and for this reason the appoint- 
ment was protested against strongly by the 
evangelical wing of the church. But with 
regard to the difficulties which he has set forth 
in his volume, he represents, with great show 
of candor and simplicity, that they have 



COLENSO UPON THE PENTATEUCH. 125 

occurred in the thorough study which he has 
given the Old Testament in his work of trans- 
lating it into the Zulu tongue, and that he has 
been compelled by them to yield the historical 
character of the books of Moses, Joshua, and 
the Chronicles. In his long preface, he tells 
us a story of his own long-smothered, secret 
doubts and suspicions, and how he contrived to 
quiet them from time to time, and especially in 
taking his oath of office, and continuing con- 
scientiously in his position. Then he tells us 
of his work of translation, and of the question, 
" Can this be true ? " which his intelligent Zulu 
helper and interpreter would raise at such 
points as the story of the flood, and the stand- 
ing still of the sun and moon at the command 
of Joshua. With reference to this question 
of his Zulu helper, he says, "My heart an- 
swered, in the words of the prophet, ' Shall a 
man speak lies in the name of the Lord ? ' I 
dared not do so. . . .1 dared not, as a ser- 
vant of the God of truth, urge my brother 
man to believe that which I did not myself be- 
lieve, which I knew to be untrue, as a matter- 
of-fact, historical narrative. I gave him, how- 
ever, such a reply as satislied him for the time, 
without throwing any discredit upon the gen- 
eral veracity of the Bible history." 

When he comes directly to the work in hand, 



126 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

he tells us what he proposes to do, viz., "to 
show, by means of a number of prominent 
instances, that the books of the Pentateuch 
contain, in their own account of the story they 
profess to relate, such remarkable contradic- 
tions, and involve such plain impossibilities, 
that they cannot be regarded as true narratives 
of actual, historical matters of fact." A very 
considerable work, and perhaps it will strike 
some of you as a little singular that it should 
remain till this nineteenth century of the Chris- 
tian era to be done. It certainly is remarkable 
if there have never been in the church hereto- 
fore as thorough, sharp-sighted, and candid 
scholars as now, and as Bishop Colenso. 

But I propose to take up some of these 
" remarkable contradictions " and " plain impos- 
sibilities," and show you what it is that he and 
other assailants of the historical verity of the 
Old Testament call contradictions and impos- 
sibilities. Perhaps we shall detect where the 
real difficulty lies. 

Beginning in his preface, he makes the state- 
ment that he had come to know for certain, on 
geological grounds, that a universal deluge, 
such as the Bible speaks of, could not possibly 
have taken place in the way described. He 
adds, that he is well aware that some have 
attempted to show that the deluge was a partial 



COLENSO UPON THE PENTATEUCH. 127 

one, but that such attempts have ever seemed 
to him to be made in the very teeth of Scrip- 
ture statements, which are as plain and explicit 
as words can possibly be. 

Now, if he were as thorough and candid a 
student of the Bible as he pretends to be, he 
would certainly have discovered and acknowl- 
edged that the assertions of a general and 
universal deluge used in the account, need not 
be necessarily understood, as we should under- 
stand such assertions, if they were made now. 
He would have seen and acknowledged that 
such assertions, as we have seen in the lecture 
upon the subject of the deluge, were used com- 
monly, in both the Old and New Testament 
Scriptures, with reference to the whole world 
as then known. As a fair and candid critic, he 
would have admitted that we need only under- 
stand the account as asserting the overwhelming- 
of that portion of the world which was then 
inhabited, and the destruction of all its inhab- 
itants, save the family of one man. And if he 
had been as well read in modern research as he 
might have been, he would have found the 
traces of such a catastrophe among all nations 
which make it certainly an historical event, and 
the Biblical narrative the best and only fitting 
account of that event. Moreover, if he had 
been as well read in geology as he professes, he 



128 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

would not have made the childish statement that 
nothing is really gained by supposing the deluge 
to have been partial. " For," he says, "as waters 
must find their own level on the earth's surface, 
without a special miracle, of which the Bible 
says nothing, a flood, which should begin with 
covering the top of Ararat, or a much lower 
mountain, must necessarily become universal." 
Geology teaches us that elevations and depres- 
sions of different portions of the earth's crust 
are constantly going on, and therefore that if 
it pleased the Creator to overwhelm any par- 
ticular portion with water, large or small, he 
could do so without varying the operation of 
common laws. The truth is, as we have 
already seen, that both Biblical criticism and 
modern science only substantiate the Xoachian 
deluge as an historical fact. 

In his preface, also, he makes some remarks 
upon the sun and moon's standing still at the 
command of Joshua, which I will refer to 
again. 

The first difficulty which the bishop formally 
brings forward relates to the two grandsons of 
Judah, Hezron and Hamul, who are named 
among those who went down with Jacob into 
Egypt. "It appears to me certain," he says, 
"that the writer of the account means to say 
that Hezron and Hamul were born in the land 



COLE N SO UPON THE PENTATEUCH. 129 

of Canaan," and then enters into a labored en- 
deavor to show that there was not time enough 
for this. Judah, he says, was only forty-two 
years old when he went with Jacob into Egypt. 
But the story of these grandsons, which is 
•peculiar, is, that Judah, having become old 
enough, marries, and has three sons. The 
eldest of these grows up, is married, and dies. 
The second comes to maturity, marries his 
brother's widow, and also dies. The third 
grows up, and declines to marry the remaining 
widow. She then deceives Judah, and in due 
time bears him twin sons. It is one of these 
twin sons who grows to maturity and becomes 
the father of the two grandsons in question, all 
of which, Colenso says, according to the ac- 
count, must have taken place in the impossible 
period of forty-two years. It were* not to be 
wondered at if a Sabbath school child should 
be puzzled over this, but that a learned Chris- 
tian minister should be, and he a bishop of the 
Church of England, is marvellous. The writer 
is giving an account of the family of Jacob, 
when he descended into Egypt. He makes its 
number sixty-six, evidently, of necessity in- 
deed, including Hezron and Hamul. But in 
declaring the number, he says, "All the souls 
that came with Jacob into Egypt, which came 
out of his loins, besides Jacob's sons' wives, all 



130 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

the souls were threescore and six." From this 
it is evident that the writer possibly meant to 
include all the family, though some of them 
may have been yet unborn. It was certainly as 
proper to speak of Hezron and Hamul thus, as 
for it to be said that Levi paid tithes to Melchis- 
edek, while yet being in the loins of Abraham, 
Abraham being the great grandfather of Levi. 
But the writer immediately adds: "And the 
sons of Joseph, which were born to him in 
Egypt, were two souls ; all the souls of the 
house of Jacob, which came into Egypt, were 
threescore and ten" — whence it is evident that 
the writer means to be understood to be speak- 
ing of the number of the primitive family of 
Jacob in Egypt, or else he contradicts himself 
on the spot. And no fair mind woidd under- 
take to interpret him otherwise than he evi- 
dently meant. But it is possible that these 
grandsons were born in Canaan after all. 
Colenso says that Judah was but forty-two 
years old at the descent into Egypt. If any 
one will take his Bible, and carefully make 
examination, he will see that it is not certain. 
He was at least forty-two years old ; he may 
have been much older, and in all probability 
was. Jacob was about forty when he went to 
Padan-aram,* forty-seven when he married 

* Gen. xxvi. 34; xxvii. 46; xxviii. 1, 2. 



COLENSO UPON THE PENTATEUCH. 131 

Leah, fifty-three, probably, when Juclah was 
born, and one hundred and thirty when he 
went to Egypt. Judah, therefore, may have 
been, and very probably was, seventy-seven 
years old ; which gives ample time for all the 
events narrated in the account. Why Colenso 
should roundly state that Judah was but forty- 
two at the descent into Egypt, I cannot see. 
If he had examined the case carefully, he 
would certainly have seen that he might have 
been, and very probably was, nearly twice that 
age. It looks as if he deliberately disregarded 
the truth, and was determined to make out 
a case. 

His next point of assault, or rather his next 
puzzle, — for he seems more like a schoolboy 
finding puzzles in the books of Moses, which 
he has not wit nor experience enough to solve, 
than a man finding serious difficulties, — is 
the size of the court of the tabernacle, com- 
pared with the number of the congregation. 
He cites Lev. viii. 1-4, "And Jehovah spake 
unto Moses, saying, . . . Gather thou all the 
congregation together unto the door of the 
tabernacle of the congregation. And Moses 
did as Jehovah commanded him. And the 
assembly was gathered together unto the door 
of the tabernacle of the congregation." He 
then says, fC It appears to be certain that by 



132 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

. . . ? the assembly,' f the whole assembly,' 
' all the congregation,' is meant the whole body 
of the people, — at all events, the adult males 
in the prime of life among them." These were 
six hundred and three thousand live hundred 
and fifty. He is not content to have this body 
gather at or before the door of the tabernacle, 
as the command says, but is determined to 
have them within the court ; for what reason 
he alone can tell, unless to create the puzzle, 
and exercise himself a little in the simple rules 
of arithmetic. He then proceeds gravely to 
state the dimensions of the court, — about one 
hundred and eighty feet by ninety, — and point 
out the absurdity of requiring or supposing six 
hundred thousand men to be gathered there. 
Of course, it would be very absurd ; but no 
more so than the difficulty which this right 
reverend bishop makes of it. They were re- 
quired, in the first place, only to gather unto 
the door of the tabernacle. And if by the 
whole congregation, we must understand all the 
adult males, the whole mass of six hundred 
thousand, allowing standing room of eighteen 
inches by twenty-four for each man, — ample 
enough, any one will admit, for men in a 
crowd, — would occupy an area of forty-two 
acres only, an area of six acres front and seven 
acres deep. It is therefore by no means ab- 



C0LEN80 UPON THE PENTATEUCH. 133 

surd or improbable that the whole congregation 
should be called together at the door of the 
tabernacle on any important occasion like that 
to which the passage cited refers. Aaron and 
his sons were to be soleinnly consecrated and 
installed as priests of the service of the Lord. 
It was proper and important that it should be 
done publicly. And though all the congrega- 
tion could not see or hear, yet it would be done 
in their presence, their elders and chiefs seeing, 
and all of them beholding the pillar of cloud 
resting upon the tabernacle, and knowing that 
what was then being done was done by the 
command, and by the present solemn sanction, 
of Jehovah. And thus, though all could not 
personally see, yet they would know, and 
would be made true witnesses of, the event. 
We can see, too, how impressive it would be, 
when this great multitude, at divine command, 
should file out of its different encampments, 
and assemble together into one great conorrega- 
tion, before the tabernacle of the congregation, 
whereon always rested the cloud of divine 
presence, for religious or other purposes. And 
it would be of immense value in making sen- 
sible and real to all the people their national 
character, their institutions and ordinances, and 
their relation to Jehovah, as their great leader 
and governor. 



134 FJ^ENIXGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

But it is not certain that the term " congre- 
gation" always meant the great body of the 
people. It did primarily, no one questions. 
But generally, the "congregation," in this 
sense, was represented by "the elders and 
princes of Israel ; " and this bod)', when it 
met, being representative of the great congre- 
gation, was called also "the congregation." In 
the first chapter of Numbers will be found a 
list of the representatives forming this body. 
In the sixteenth verse it is said, "These were 
the renowned of the congregation," or, more 
accurately, "the called ones of the congrega- 
tion," " those called to convention." * It is 
therefore not always necessary to suppose that 
when the congregation was called together, or 
Moses or Joshua is represented as addressing 
them, or reading the law, it was the whole 
body of the people. And this disposes of the 
third puzzle of Colenso, which is, how Moses 
or Joshua could address all Israel, and the con- 
gregation, and be heard by them. No reader 
of the Bible, with ordinary understanding, 
would suppose they pretended to. 

Colenso finds another and an amusing diffi- 
culty in the extent of the camp, and the duties 

* Cf. Bush in loc. ; also, Home, Introduction, vol. ii, sect. 
"Government of Moses," and Smith's Diet, of the Bible, art. 
" Congregation." 



COLENSO UPON THE PENTATEUCH. 135 

of the priests. In the case of the sin offering 
for the priest, it was required that the whole 
body of the victim, except the fat of the in- 
wards and some other small portions, should 
be carried out of the camp and burned. Citing 
this requirement, our problem-seeker goes into 
a toilsome calculation of the size of the camp, 
to show that the refuse of the sacrifices must 
be carried at least a mile and a half, probably 
much farther. Then he says, "Thus the refuse 
of these sacrifices would have to be carried by 
the priest himself (Aaron, Eleazar, or Ithamar 
— there were no others) a distance of three 
quarters of a mile," This is a great difficulty 
in the eyes of our confused bishop. "But how 
huge does this difficulty become, if, instead of 
taking the excessively cramped area of one 
thousand six hundred and fifty-two acres — less 
than three square miles — for such a camp as 
this, we take the more reasonable allowance of 
Scott, who says, 'this encampment is computed 
to have formed a movable city of twelve miles 
square,' thai is, about the size of London. , . . 
In that case, the offal of these sacrifices would 
have had to be carried by Aaron himself, or 
one of his sons, a distance of six miles," If 
the matter were not so serious, this might be 
called a capital joke. It looks certainly as if 
the bishop had undertaken to impose upon his 



136 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

readers. Otherwise he is certainly befooled 
himself. For, in the first place, let the camp 
have been of the largest dimensions, it is by 
no means certain that the tabernacle was not 
so placed but that it was in convenient vicinity 
to an appropriate spot without the camp. 
Secondly, it is unfounded assumption to say 
that Aaron and his two sons were the only 
priests. Thirdly, he leaves out of sight the 
fact that the whole tribe of Levites had been 
given to the priests as assistants,* and that we 
have numerous examples f of their assistance 
at the sacrifices. And fourthly, he sinks his 
Hebrew scholarship beyond recovery, in in- 
sisting that the words, " shall he carry forth," 
mean that the priest himself shall carry forth. 
For if the Hebrew word is not an example of 
an impersonal verb, equivalent to K one shall 
carry forth," "they shall carry forth," or "it 
shall be carried forth," as some Hebrew schol- 
ars assert, it is at least in that conjugation of 
the Hebrew verb (Hiphil) which is causative 
in its signification, and therefore, translated 
literally, would be, "he shall cause to be car- 
ried forth." It is certain, therefore, that the 
priests themselves did not have to perforin 
personally this vast labor, and that the passage 
does not represent that they did, and that the 

* Num. iii. f 2 Chron. xxix. 3-i ; xxx. 16, 17 ; xxxv. 10, 11. 



COLENSQ UPON THE PENTATEUCH. 137 

difficulty is created wholly by the wilfulness or 
stupidity of this too famous assailant. 

Another difficulty is found in the promise 
made to the Israelites,* that all the inhabitants 
of their promised land should either be de- 
stroyed or driven out ; but not in one year, it 
is said, "lest the land become desolate, and 
the beast of the field multiply against thee. 
By little and little I will drive them out from 
before thee, until thou be increased and inherit 
the land." Having quoted this passage, he 
proceeds to show that the whole land, divided 
among the tribes in the time of Joshua, includ- 
ing the countries beyond the Jordan, was only 
about eleven thousand square miles in extent, 
or seven million acres. This was occupied 
by the Israelites, numbering at least two mil- 
lion, to say nothing about the* Canaan it es that 
remained in the land. He compares this with 
the three English counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, 
and Essex, and finds it bearing about the same 
density of population. " And surely," he says, 
" it cannot be said that these three eastern 
counties, with their flourishing towns . . . and 
innumerable villages, are in any danger of lying 
desolate, with the beasts of the field multi- 
plying against the human inhabitants." Hence 
he argues that the reason given is a fiction — 

* Ex. xxiii. 27-30. 



138 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

unhistorical. To strengthen his case, he makes 
a comparison Avith Natal, his own missionary 
field in Sonth Africa, where, he sa} r s, with an 
area of eighteen thousand square miles, a pop- 
ulation of one hundred and fifty thousand, all 
told, are perfectly well able to maintain them- 
selves against the beasts of the field. The 
lions, elephants, rhinoceroses, and hippopot- 
ami, which once abounded in the country, have 
long ago disappeared. Leopards, wild boars, 
hyenas, and jackals are killed occasionally in 
the bush, but many a white man may have lived 
for years in the colony, as he has done, and 
travelled about in all parts of it, without seeing 
or hearing one. This, again, is really amusing. 
Bishop Colenso assumes to be a critical student 
of the Bible. He is making a translation from 
the original Hebrew into the Zulu language. 
In making the translation, he finds in this 
promise a difficulty, and yet never finds its 
solution. I will make no pretensions to being 
a very critical student of the Bible, — not such 
a one, certainly, as a translator ought to be, — 
and yet several years ago, in the ordinary 
studies of a pastor, I met, not only this diffi- 
culty, but almost as soon, its solution. The 
solution lies in this, which it is a mystery that 
Bishop Colenso failed to learn, viz., that the 
land which was divided among the tribes by 



COLENSO UPON THE PENTATEUCH. 139 

Joshua, was not the same with that which was 
originally promised ; that is, it was only a part 
of it, and that a small part. The territory 
promised to the Israelites was all the region 
between the Mediterranean Sea and the Eu- 
phrates, having for its northern border a line 
commencing at the Mediterranean at about 
thirty-five degrees north latitude,* and running 
east, with more or less regularity, till it reached 
the Euphrates. The Euphrates was the eastern 
border. The Mediterranean was the western. 
The southern commenced at the Eiver Mle, in 
Egypt, at the mouth of the eastern branch 
evidently, and swept eastward, touching the 
southern point of the Dead Sea, till it reached 
the Euphrates. f 

This was a territory, as any one may see by 
glancing at a map, from twelve to twenty times 
as large as that divided by Joshua at first. 
The truth is, that the Israelites never possessed 
themselves of all their promised inheritance, 
by their own fault. The nearest they ever 
came to it was in the time of Solomon. The 
knowledge of this simple fact, which every 
ordinary student of the Old Testament ought 
to know, is a sufficient answer to the difficulty 
here raised. 

* Num. xxxiv. 8-10 ; Ezek. xlvii. 15-17. Cf. J. L. Porter's 
"Five Years in Damascus," Vol. II., p. 354. 
f Gen. xv. 18 ; Josh. i. 4. 



140 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

♦I am afraid that my audience are ready to 
say that they have had enough of Colenso's 
difficulties, and that their patience is well-nigh 
gone ; but at the risk of exhausting it, I must 
present one more, because it is not only a diffi- 
culty of Colenso's, but one which attentive 
readers of the Bible very often feel, and do 
not readily solve for themselves. It is the 
number of the Israelites at the time of the 
exodus. The adult males alone, capable of 
bearing arms, are stated to have been six hun- 
dred thousand and a little more. At the low- 
est calculation, this would make a total number 
of men, women, and children, of two millions, 
— more probably, two and a half millions. At 
this figure the number is usually set. The 
question now is, how fifty-one persons — the 
number of males in Jacob's family in the first 
generation — could increase to this number in 
the short period of two hundred and fifteen 
years, the period of the sojourn in Egypt. 
Moreover, the promise was made that they 
should go forth from Egypt in the fourth gen- 
eration ; and Moses was in the fourth genera- 
tion from Jacob, and Eleazar in the fifth. 
How could this number have been attained in 
even the fifth generation ? The twelve sons of 
Jacob had in all fifty-three sons, an average of 
four and one half each. Colenso, taking this 



COLENSO UPON THE PENTATEUCH. 141 

number as the average rate of increase, can 
make but about five thousand of the generation 
of Eleazar ; and adding together the males of 
all the generations that would then be living, 
he cannot make them exceed twenty-eight . 
thousand five hundred. How are we to solve 
this difficulty? In the first place, we are to 
remember, what Colenso leaves out of sight 
altogether, that not only do a people in a state 
of servitude multiply faster than in any other 
condition, but it was a special promise of God 
to Jacob that his seed should be multiplied and 
become as the sand of the sea. In particular, 
when Jacob was on his way to Egypt, God 
said, " Fear not to go down into Egypt ; for I 
will there make of thee a great nation." We 
are led, then, to expect to see the hand of God 
in the matter. We are led to expect a remark- 
able increase, and are warranted in assuming a 
high ratio of increase — one as high as the 
highest. Moreover, it is expressly stated that 
"the children of Israel were fruitful, and in- 
creased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed 
exceeding mighty ; and the land was filled with 
them."* Then the Egyptians afflicted them, 
expressly to repress their increase. "But the 
more they afflicted them, the more they multi- 
plied and grew." | We are to remember also, 

* Exod. i. 7. t Exod. i. 12. 



142 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

that though they did go out in the fourth gen- 
eration, that is, before the fourth generation 
had passed away, yet at the same time the 
fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and even, in some 
cases, the ninth and tenth generations, had 
come on to the stage. We are told in the last 
chapter of Genesis, that Joseph, living till he 
was one hundred and ten, saw Ephraim's chil- 
dren of the third generation, that is, the fourth 
generation from himself; four generations, 
therefore, since he was married after thirty, 
came upon the stage of life in eighty years. 
In the remaining one hundred and forty-four 
of the two hundred and fifteen of the sojourn 
(he lived seventy-one years after Jacob's de- 
scent) after his death, there might well be, in 
some cases, the children of the sixth or seventh 
generation beyond this. And in fact, we find 
an instance in Joshua, who, while Eleazar, 
the priest, his contemporary, was of the fifth 
generation, and Bezaleel of the seventh, was 
himself of the tenth* from Jacob. Now, 
commencing with the fifty-one males of the 
second generation, aud allowing eight to be the 
ratio of increase, — by no means high, in view 
of what we have seen, — the number of the 
eighth Generation alone would be thirteen 
million three hundred and sixty-nine thousand 

* Num. vii. 23, 27. 



COLE N SO UPON THE PENTATEUCH. 143 

three hundred and forty-four. Allowing it to 
be but five, the number of the ninth generation 
would be four million four hundred and six 
thousand two hundred and seventy-five. There- 
fore, making allowances for the fact that all of 
the eighth or ninth generation were not yet 
born, and for the proportion of deaths, and 
adding in the proportions of the fourth, fifth, 
sixth, and seventh generations living, there 
can be no difficulty at all in accepting the fact 
that the Israelites must have numbered from 
two to three millions of people at the time of 
their exodus. 

Such are the assaults of this famous critic 
upon the books of Moses. As the examples 
given have been answered, so may all the cases 
he has adduced, — a work which patient inves- 
tigation could readily do. I need not ask if he 
has succeeded in his effort to show that the 
books of Moses are unhistorical. He has not 
impeached them in their historical character in 
the least. These are indeed difficulties at first 
sight ; they would be very serious difficulties 
to one who had not the means of overcoming 
them ; but they are only difficulties, as math- 
ematical problems are difficulties ; they have a 
solution, if one is only acute and studious 
enough to attain it. Or, some of them may be 
difficulties like facts of other history ; they 



144 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

have lost their known clew ; we have not all 
the data, and have to make them good with 
suppositions . But every one grants that if in 
such case a reasonable supposition makes all 
difficulty disappear, then such difficulty is not 
insurmountable : it is not valid objection : it ia 
not to be taken into the account, so long as 
there are good and substantial reasons for the 
opposite. There are good and substantial rea- 
sons in favor of, not only the historic character, 
but the divine inspiration, of the books of Mo- 
ses. Can, then, any difficulty, which is merely 
a puzzle to the understanding, even suppose that 
it should never be able to solve it, be an equal 
counterpoise? There are problems in Egyp- 
tian, Grecian, Roman history. Do they render 
the narratives in which they occur unhistorical ? 
Kot at all. They still remain only so many 
problems. Light may come. And so, indeed, 
with new light, new difficulties may arise. 
But we have seen thus far that new difficulties 
have, in turn, themselves yielded to patient 
thought, study, and time. 

But let us remark some of the characteristics 
of Colenso ; for they serve to illustrate those 
of assailants of the Bible generally. 

1. His want of acumen, — or, perhaps, I 
should say, his possession of a peculiar acu- 
men, which makes him sharp enough to search 



COLENBO UPON THE PENTATEUCH. 145 

out and discover difficulties, but dull enough 
in finding the rational and common sense ex- 
planation of them. In his study with reference 
to the family of Judah, how he could have 
failed to have discovered what is at least a 
possible solution of the difficulty, one can 
hardly see. Or in the matter of driving out 
the inhabitants of the promised land, how he 
could have failed to call to mind what were 
the boundaries of the land, as originally prom- 
ised. Sometimes it seems to be common sense 
which he lacks. For instance, in the matter of 
the standing still of the sun and moon at the 
command of Joshua, which has been reserved 
for notice at this place. With reference to the 
supposition, which a writer had put forward 
only as a conceivable thing, and therefore suffi- 
cient to relieve the event of impossibility, that 
the earth, by the omnipotence of its Creator, 
could have been made to rest upon its axis if 
he willed it, he says : w Not to speak of the 
fact that if the earth's motion were suddenly 
stopped, a man's feet would be arrested, while 
his body was moving at the rate (on the equa- 
tor) of one thousand miles an hour (or rather, 
one thousand miles a minute, since not only 
must the earth's diurnal rotation on its axis be 
stopped, but its annual motion also through 
space) , so that every human being and animal 
10 



146 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

would be dashed to pieces in a moment, and a 
mighty deluge overwhelm the earth, unless all 
this were prevented by a profusion of mirac- 
ulous interferences, — our point is at once 
fatal to the above solution." His writer, he 
says, quotes only the words, M So the sun stood 
still in the midst of heaven . . ., " and dis- 
misses the whole subject in a short note, and 
never even mentions the moon. But the Bible 
says, " The sun stood still, and the moon stayed; " 
and the arresting of the earth's motion, while 
it might cause the appearance of the sun 
"standing still," woidd not account for the 
moon's "staying"! It would be interesting to 
know what he thinks would be the appearance 
of the moon, if not of staying, in this case. 
And certainly, if Almighty Power, pervading 
all space, and therefore the mass of the globe, 
and all objects on its surface, should stop the 
globe from revolving for a time, it could pre- 
serve in safety all those objects ; and it would 
be no stretch of the miracle at all. And this 
remark is sufficient answer to the whole of his 
objection. 

2. Ignorance of some of the first laws of 
interpretation. It is certainly one of the first, 
as it is one of the most obvious, of these laws, 
to take lan^uao-e in the sense in which it was 
used by the writer or speaker. If we should 



COLE N SO UPON THE PENTATEUCH. 147 

find reason for believing that the writer of the 
narrative of the Creation employed the word 
" day " in a sense which later ages had lost, we 
certainly should be bound to receive it in that 
sense. Or if we find that it was customary to 
speak of all the known world, or all the inhab- 
ited world, or all the Roman world, as all the 
world absolutely, we should be bound to un- 
derstand it so. So when any idiom is used, as 
"he says," "he did," "he went," for the imper- 
sonal "they say," "it was done," "one went," 
it is improper to adhere persistently to the lit- 
eral translation, and say that that is what it 
means. These things Colenso, and all who 
wish to mistranslate the Bible, and force it to 
mean what it does not mean, constantly do. 

3. Misrepresentation, if not a misunder- 
standing, of the ordinary view of inspiration. 
He seems once to have felt obliged to maintain 
" every word as the sacred utterance of the 
Spirit of God," and therefore the language in 
every part to be received as true and infallible 
as it is. It is a view of inspiration which sets 
and fixes each individual word in its own 
meaning:, and will not allow it a sense derived 
from idiomatic use. Thus, when it is said * 
that the Lord brought the fear of David upon 
all nations, Colenso's view of inspiration binds 

* 1 Chron. xiv. 17. 



148 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

Lira to understand this as asserting " all nations " 
literally and absolutely, as, for instance, the 
then inhabitants of this western continent. But 
this is a travesty upon the true and orthodox 
doctrine of inspiration 9 which is, that while some 
parts of Scripture are the immediate and direct 
utterance of the Holy Spirit, other parts are 
written under the superintendence of the Holy 
Spirit, allowing the writers, like Moses, Ezra, 
David, and Isaiah, to use their native tongue, 
in their own style, freety, with all its idioms 
and 'peculiar forms of expression ; and other 
parts still are merely the truthful record of 
events and lives, adopted by the authorization 
of the Holy Spirit into the sacred canon, as 
filling an important place in sacred history, and 
adapted in the best manner — being histories, 
as they are, of individuals and a people directly 
under the divine government — to reveal and 
instruct in the will and character of God. It 
is certainly a curious view of inspiration which 
makes us say, when the idiom of the Hebrew 
language employs, "he says," "he carries," for 
an impersonal, "it is said," "it is carried," that 
the Holy Spirit means, whatever the writers 
meant, "he says," "he carries," &c, and we 
must not read it in any other way. 

All the Bible is truly inspired. I hold most 
confidently to that. And I hold most confi- 



COLENSO UPON THE PENTATEUCH. 149 

dently that there is one true interpretation of 
the Bible, in accordance with a true science 
and with certain laws of interpretation. And 
when we have made this interpretation, we 
have arrived at truth, whether it be historic, 
scientific, or religious — infallible truth. The 
inspiration of the Bible is not merely that in- 
definite, transcendental thing, a certain unseen 
sign of God's Spirit, speaking in the Bible, of 
which each individual heart alone can be the 
judge. If our heavenly Father and righteous 
God has given us at all a declaration of his 
will and of divine truth for our enlightenment 
in this pilgrimage of darkness, we may be sure 
it is no uncertain-sounding trumpet like this. 
It is meant to convey plain truths — truths of 
the greatest import — in the plainest way, to 
every child of man. It is directed and adapted 
as a " common sense " communication to the 
common sense of men, and the common sense 
of men ought not to fail in its interpretation. 

Bishop Colenso is a representative of more 
than one class of assailants of the Bible. 
Some of his assaults are founded upon an 
amazing dulness and stupidity ; others upon 
an ignorance or an ignoring of the first laws of 
Biblical interpretation ; others from a confused 
or beclouded state of mind — he has not clearly 
settled for himself first principles, and is not 



150 EVENINGS WITH THE BIBLE. 

able to cut his way clearly through the meshes 
of difficulty and confusion into which he has 
thrown himself; others from a bias against the 
truth, and an unwillingness to accept its con- 
clusions ; and others from a wilful perversity 

— he will not see the truth, though it stand 
revealed before his eyes. And the thorough- 
ness with which the church has met and swept 
away all these objections, in time past, should 
make us feel assured, my friends, with ref- 
erence to the future. As the Bible has in the 
past triumphed over all its assailants — and 
some of them have been mighty — so we may 
rest assured it will in all time to come. It is 
the truth of God. In all its parts it is authen- 
ticated by him, and serves to reveal most 
clearly and sufficiently his character and will to 
mankind. And as a body of divine truth 
should, it bears the seal and impress in itself 

— in the righteousness, holiness, truth, love, 
and benevolence of its truths and precepts, and 
in their tendency to counteract evil in man, 
and make him just, true, and good — of its 
divine origin. Xo habitual reader of the Bible 
will ever deny but that it is the word of God 

— an oracle from heaven. 

And I hope, my hearers, that one effect with 
you from the series of discourses, of which the 
present is the conclusion, has been an increased 



COLE K SO UPON THE PENTATEUCH. 151 

assurance that the Bible is proof against the 
assaults of science and criticism ; on the other 
hand, that science and criticism will only serve 
to show the strength and basis of the Bible as 
truth, as certainly thus far, in the work they 
have really accomplished, they have only done. 
As Geology, when her voice has come to be 
heard with some distinctness, has rendered her 
testimony that the beginning of the record is 
not only true, but must be divinely inspired, 
so will historical research and criticism give 
their testimony to the historical verity, both 
of the Books of Moses and the Gospels of the 
New Testament. 



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